Well over a century ago, the Parisian bistro Café de la Rotonde was well-known as a creative hub for artists like Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera, and for fostering avant-garde art movements like dadaism and surrealism. By the 1920s it had become a popular hangout for expatriate American writers like Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as French existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and other writers, philosophers, and intellectuals.
The bistro’s reputation as a catalyst for creativity inspired poet Karina Longo to bestow its name on her recently launched online poetry magazine. La Rotonde Review made its debut in January with an aim, as Karina explains on the magazine’s about page, “to offer a space where high-quality poetry is celebrated, and poets from all backgrounds are supported.” La Rotonde Review got off to a great start in January with its inaugural poem, “Salt,” by Joseph Fasano, and has been publishing fantastic work since. Soon, La Rotonde Review will publish its first anthology: a collection of poems connected to the theme of “dissolution,” which she discusses in more detail below.
Karina, who can be found on Twitter as @TheDarkestStar_, is a neurodivergent Brazilian-Italian poet based in Milan. She has been published in many impressive literary magazines, including Expat Press, Apocalypse Confidential, Eunoia Review, Eulogy Press, Some Words, Trampoline Poetry, Michigan City Review of Books, Dodo Eraser, HAWKEYE, Burning House Press, Blood + Honey, Be About It Press, Mythic Picnic, cataloguing poetry, Micromance Magazine, Resurrection Mag, Londemere Lit, and Prosetrics. She also has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Read on to learn more about Karina and her lit mag.
1. Please share a little bit about your career as a poet. What inspired you to become a poet?
Being a poet has been a long-time dream of mine. As an extremely anxious and shy person who is not very comfortable with the spoken word, I’ve always relied on writing to express what I couldn’t otherwise. I started writing poetry and lyrics in my teens, and I was certain that I would become either a singer-songwriter (I love music) or a poet. Life took a different turn, and I became a translator and graphic designer instead.
But last year, at 35, I asked myself, “Why not chase that dream?” That’s when I started submitting my poetry to literary magazines online, and I’ve been lucky enough to have work published in dozens of them. I’m also currently working on my first poetry chapbook and have created and now run La Rotonde Review as well.
2. What inspired you to create La Rotonde Review?
When I started submitting my poetry, I realized that, even though many excellent publications welcome writers from all backgrounds, many of them seem to have a more specific taste and aesthetic. That’s great and necessary, but I wanted to build a space that balanced curation with inclusion. It sounds simple, but it’s actually quite difficult to do.
At La Rotonde, we’ve published both people who had never written poetry before and celebrated poets; genre poetry, experimental poetry, prose poetry, formal poetry, and lots of very different free verse. We don’t follow a particular aesthetic preference, while at the same time carefully curating the work to ensure it is high-quality, moves us, and comes from an honest place.
3. What advice do you have for writers who wish to submit their writing to La Rotonde Review?
My main piece of advice is: please do it. Don’t overthink it. Just read the guidelines, and as long as your piece follows those few simple rules, we want to read it.
If you receive a rejection, don’t be discouraged. As much as we strive to be, as I said, an inclusive space, rejections are of course part of the journey of being a writer. As an editor-in-chief who is also a poet and still submits a lot of work, I can guarantee that I receive plenty of rejections too. If I like a magazine, I’ll certainly keep trying, if their guidelines allow it.
At La Rotonde, we want to hear again from writers whose work we’ve previously rejected, because every piece is unique, and a rejection of a submission is never a rejection of the writer.
4. You soon will publish an anthology of poetry based on the theme of “dissolution.” Talk about about this anthology and what inspired you to create it.
The theme of dissolution has been personally following me, especially over the past year, and I knew I had to do something with it. It then kept appearing in my own poems, in the music I listen to, and I began to notice the pattern. I believe that when you go through difficult experiences, and while you face them in life, as a creative person you also need space to transform and release them through art. Creating this project became a kind of release.
I was also curious to see how others would interpret dissolution and how different those interpretations might be from my own. I was surprised, moved, and genuinely amazed by the range of submissions we received and the stories they tell. We have poems exploring the dissolution of the body, intimacy, memory, language, and much more.
5. What three or four writers (poets or others) who have most inspired you along your path, and why?
Sylvia Plath was the first poet I truly fell in love with. When I was very young and poetry still felt close to journaling, someone gifted me “Ariel,” and I was completely enchanted. Through her work, I began to understand what confessional poetry could be. I was fascinated by her strange, visceral metaphors and by the emotional intensity of her poems, the way they seemed to speak directly to me.
Another writer who has profoundly inspired me is Franz Kafka, particularly all his epistolary work, which I think carries a self-interrogation driven by longing, anxiety, and self-division that really resonates with me. For a long time, I wanted to incorporate humor into my writing, but I never considered myself a particularly funny person. Then I realized Kafka probably didn’t think of himself that way either, yet his work is also often darkly funny. That “gave me permission” to embrace humor on my own terms sometimes, which was important.
Finally, I feel immense gratitude toward the contemporary poet and writer Joseph Fasano, whose work and mentorship have shaped me in meaningful ways. Beyond being a wonderful writer, he is an extraordinarily compassionate human being. During the short time I had the privilege of studying with him, he taught me that the most important thing in writing is never to lose one’s humanity. He encouraged me to embrace vulnerability, trust my authentic voice, and approach both poetry and life with greater openness. It was a truly transformative experience.
Andrew Careaga 