Visiting the Skull Tower of Niš
A poem by Jake Sheff inspired by a grotesque 200-year-old monument in Serbia. … Continue readingVisiting the Skull Tower of Niš
A poem by Jake Sheff inspired by a grotesque 200-year-old monument in Serbia. … Continue readingVisiting the Skull Tower of Niš
by Melissa Johnson If you want to send a message to your enemy, a tower created with nearly 1,000 of their skulls is a powerful one. In the city of Niš in Serbia looms a fifteen-foot-tall stone tower embedded with human skulls. The Skull Tower, or Ćele kula, was built
PY: How did you first hear about the Skull Tower of Niš, and what about it inspired you to write this poem? JS: In all honesty, I went looking for it, but I didn’t know what it was. I wanted to find something worth knowing about with a lot of
Continue readingPerson Behind the Poem – A Q&A with Jake Sheff
A poem about the war and remembrance. … Continue readingThe Late Unpleasantness
One day, a random conversation with a friend named Joukje—pronounced “Yaaook”—led to a discussion about birth certificates. Joukje was born on February 17, 1947 in the Netherlands, exactly a day before the birth of Princess Christina of the Netherlands. To celebrate the birth of the princess, her mother, Queen Juliana,