The Cafe Review’s volunteers, from left, Katie Benedict, Tim Wooten, Craig Sipe, Kevin Sweeney and Steve Luttrell gather for a business meeting at a Portland bar. Eloise Goldsmith / The Forecaster

The staff of the Cafe Review – Maine’s 35-year running quarterly art and poetry journal headed by Falmouth resident and poet Steve Luttrell – gathered last week to talk business on the heels of completing their summer 2024 issue, “Lyric Resistance: Ukrainian Poetry of War and Hope.”

The staff, all volunteers, don’t have an official office so they headed instead to the Portland bar LFK. Assembled at a table were Luttrell, Editor Kevin Sweeney, Poetry and Audio Editor Craig Sipe, Managing Editor Katie Benedict, and a member of Cafe Review’s board, Tim Wooten.

The new issue, which is out soon, features the work of 17 Ukrainian poets and 12 Ukrainian artists, as well as the work of seven translators. The Cafe Review has previously published issues dedicated to a particular part of the world – a Scottish issue and multiple Russian issues, for example – but the new edition specifically engages with the ongoing war in Ukraine, which began in 2014 but escalated when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.

“This issue is dedicated to the brave people of Ukraine who are currently enduring the harsh realities of an unjust war waged by Russia,” reads the introduction.

The illustration on the journal’s summer cover is the work of Ukrainian artist Marianna Maslova. Contributed / Cafe Review

“The poems whose English translations have gathered here represent a tapestry of experiences, emotions, and reflections that reveal the depth of the Ukrainian soul in these trying times. Each piece, in its distinct style, offers a window into the lives of those who are fighting not just for their homeland, but for the principles of freedom and sovereignty.”

For this issue, the Cafe Review engaged the help of Anna Halberstadt and Philip Nikolayev, both Soviet Union-born poets who speak Ukrainian, to guest edit the collection. Halberstadt and Nikolayev also translated a number of the poems themselves.

Nikolayev, who grew up in Moldova, came to the United States in 1990. When he began writing poems in English and submitting them for publication, the Cafe Review was one of the first places he had one published, he told The Forecaster.

Working on this issue is his small way of supporting the Ukrainian people and fighting back against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and the ongoing war, Nikolayev said.

“My thought (is) that it’s necessary for the English speaking world to see, to better understand the conflict, because (poetry) provides an additional kind of window on the whole thing. It adds a human dimension to it. Americans hear about Ukraine, mostly in the news … But the poetry offers a kind of firsthand, direct subjective experience,” he said.

“It’s not rhetoric and it’s not allegory, it’s what’s happening to them for real. It’s terrible stuff,” he added.

Nikolayev said he cried when he was translating many of the poems.

He was especially impacted, he said, by Oleksandr Irvanets’ “Stork.”

The final four lines of Irvanets’ poem are:

“How will those birds perch on poles and trees,
On slanted rooftops, on ruined things?
And will they be bringing iron babies
To us here, through this war, on their shot-through wings?”

Luttrell is particularly excited about the cover of this issue, which was done by Ukrainian artist Marianna Maslova, who is originally from Kazakhstan. The issue also features an interview with Marianna Kiyanovska, an award-winning Ukrainian writer, translator and literary scholar, and multiple poems by the highly acclaimed poet Boris Khersonsky.

Cafe Review grew out of open poetry readings that Luttrell used to organize at a now closed cafe in Portland, Benedict said. The magazine has a long history of bringing in celebrated writers while operating on a shoestring budget.

In recent years poet Forrest Gander, whose book “Be With” won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize, has published works with the Cafe Review. In the 1990s, Pulitzer Prize winners Charles Simic and Carolyn Kizer contributed work to it.

These days the review comes together with a budget of roughly $5,000 according to Luttrell, but this year, the Cafe Review achieved 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, meaning they are now tax exempt and donations to it are also tax exempt.

Getting that designation “was a long time coming, and it was starting to impede what we could do as an organization to not have that status,” Benedict said.

As he looks to the future, Luttrell wants the Cafe Review to find someone to do public relations and social media in order to spread the word about the publication. He’s also thought about expanding review to written works besides poetry, though longer works of fiction or nonfiction would require more staff time and effort. During last week’s meeting at LFK, he generally spoke about wanting more recognition for the Cafe Review.

Luttrell is a longtime fixture in Maine’s literary scene. Originally from South Portland, he attended North Yarmouth Academy, where he became the school’s literary magazine editor and developed a strong interest in poetry.

“So it started with me at an early age – the disease of Ars Poetica,” he said.

He went on to author six books of poetry and has a seventh coming out later this summer called “Paper Boats,” which is being published by Igneus Press. He also served as the Portland’s poet laureate from 2009 to 2011.

The Cafe Review and subscriptions are available at thecafereview.com.