Four Poets, Four Countries, Four Presses, but Five Translators
Because I can't help but want to give you something to read
A part of connectivity is exploring the paths. A path of parts is the act of translation. Language is both part and whole. Take, for instance, a translated book. One can follow so far from the mere gesture of having written. From:
Who blurb’d the covers and what books they’ve written and who’ve blurb’d the respective blurbers?
Who are the editors of the press, have they written anything, has what they’ve been written been published by other presses, who were the editors there? to
Who translated the book? What other books have they translated? Did those other books’ original-language authors have other books? Were those translated? Who translated them? What else have these translators written or translated? to
The acknowledgements of a book: who are listed, how many of them are also writers? Where else do those authors show up? What types of books can be found from the depths of the acknowledgements?
Today, I offer a simple breadth of exploration. Here are uniquely four books from four presses from four authors from (admittedly) five translators. Because life loves asymmetry.
First we have The Confessions by Fabián O. Iriarte translated from the Spanish by Lawrence Schimel. O. Iriarte is an Argentinian poet published by Entre Rios Books, a press close to my heart specializing in translations out of Argentina and doing some absolutely marvelous work with hybrid works to form a composition of musicality, lyricism, and more. The Confessions is a marvelous work, one of the most touching and heartfelt books of poems I’ve read in some time.
Lawrence Schimel is an unendingly prolific author and translator, though, and following the through lines of his work will likely take thousands more words than I am prepared to dive into (and, I would much prefer to return attention when I’ve read much of the work involved). Schimel’s work convers a large swathe of genre from children’s work to middle-age novels, to graphic novels, memoirs, poetry, and more. It is a modern marvel to be attuned to so many different types of readers and to think in a way that is suitable for all. And, in a common theme for learning about translators, I would argue most translators have a subversive excellence to them. Below are a sampling of four works (of the hundreds with his name on them) that I have come across in the wilds and can attest to!
The Wild Book by Juan Villoro (Restless Books, USA; HopeRoad Publishing, UK)
I Offer My Heart as a Target by Johanny Vázquez Paz
Out In the Open by Jesús Carraso, adapted by Javi Rey
The second work I’d like to spotlight is the book of poems titled Lightwall written by Romanian Liliana Ursu and translated by Sean Cotter to be published by Zephyr Press. What Lightwall accomplishes is a feat of ease: while reading the poems in this collection, rarely did I find any stuttering, any moments of choices where a personality was revealed to me. Instead, what Cotter and Ursu seemed to have accomplished, is the miracle of alignment - a book of poems where, truly, the translation feels as natural as having been uttered from a single mouth. Now, I’m sure, discussing with either or both of them will result in humility and any number of remarks about the difficulty, the finicking of language, the attention, and the finesse.
This touch of ease is something I have grown fairly accustomed to of Cotter’s translations. One of the more recent acclaims that Cotter can attest to is the winning of the Dublin Literary Award for Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu. However, this marks a long line of defiant merit from Cotter with stunning works like FEM by Magda Cârneci, or Wheel with a Single Spoke and Other Poems by Nichita Stănescu. Below I’ve included links to some of his other work; however, it is immensely noteworthy how Cotter also manages to translate and swing between poetry and fiction, as well as proliferate a representative Romanian canon through his own efforts.
Cotter, Sean, trans. Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu. Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum Books, 2022.
Cotter, Sean, trans. FEM by Magda Cârneci. Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum Books, 2021.
Cotter, Sean. Literary Translation and the Idea of a Minor Romania. University of Rochester Press, 2014.
Cotter, Sean, ed., trans. and afterword. Wheel with a Single Spoke and Other Poems by Nichita Stănescu. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2012.
Cotter, Sean, trans. and introduction. Goldsmith Market by Liliana Ursu. Boston: Zephyr Press, 2003.
Cotter, Sean, trans. and introduction. Second-Hand Souls: Selected Writings by Nichita Danilov. Prague: Twisted Spoon Press, 2003.
Each of the collections of poems are vastly different from each other, both in technical craft and in affect. This third, Violet Islands by Reina María Rodríguez and translated from the Spanish by Kristin Dykstra and Nancy Gates-Madsen, is an immaculately personal work in the way of much of Cuban Reina María Rodríguez’s work. Published by Green Integer press, the poems here invoke an intimacy, often electing to follow a single image through memory or transforming through the evocations of color. Dykstra and Gates-Madsen tackle an incredibly challenging feat in translation of collaboration on translations. If a translation often ends up in some form of third-space of writing, where it is neither entirely authentic to the original poem nor entirely independent with the translator’s voice, co-translation amplifies this. Whereas before you had a triangulation effect now you have Author < - > Translator < - > Poem < - > Translator < - > Author.
Dykstra is an incredibly gracious translator as you will see below — much of her work includes co-translators, additional interviews or introductions by others. And, sure, many of these decisions can be credited as much to the press involved as to the individual authors, from my experience within publishing, uplifting and integrating others into a book-length project is an energy that must originate from the source material.
The Winter Garden Photograph / La foto del invernadero, by Reina María Rodríguez. Int. & tr. Kristin Dykstra (principal translator); includes a set of co-translations with Nancy Gates Madsen & an interview by Rosa Alcalá
Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019
Materia Prima, Anthology of Poetry by Amanda Berenguer. Ed. & int. Kristin Dykstra & Kent Johnson; Tr. Gillian Brassil, Anna Deeny Morales, Kristin Dykstra, Kent Johnson, Urayoán Noel, Jeannine Marie Pitas, Mónica de la Torre, and Alex Verdolini. Preface by Roberto Echavarren & interview with Amanda Berenguer by Silvia Guerra, tr. Jeannine Pitas
Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019
The World as Presence / El mundo como ser poetry by Marcelo Morales. Tr. & int. Kristin Dykstra. The University of Alabama Press, 2016
Counterpunch (And Other Horizontal Poems) / El contragolpe (y otros poemas horizontales). Poetry by Juan Carlos Flores tr. & int. Kristin Dykstra. The University of Alabama Press, 2016
Did You Hear About the Fighting Cat? / Oíste hablar del gato de pelea?. Poetry by Omar Pérez tr. by Kristin Dykstra. Shearsman Books, 2010
Something of the Sacred / Algo de lo sagrado. Poetry by Omar Pérez tr. by Kristin Dykstra. Factory School, 2007
Gates-Madsen, likewise, has inspiring scholarship ranging on postcoloniality, ecology, and trauma. To write on these subjects is to grasp toward a representational part of a whole, taking the emotion evoked by an individual artwork and using it to discuss the spirit of a region or the response of a region to a particular moment in time. And in order to write in this way, one must be willing to at least imagine community and collaboration as a necessary goal.
Trauma, Taboo, and Truth-Telling: Listening to Silences in Postdictatorship Argentina. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, June 2016.
Finally, we have a collection by Serbian Zvonko Karanović titled It was easy to set the snow on fire translated by Ana Božičević and published by Phoneme Media. This is the only collected poems I’ve included in this list, not because I have any great bias against them, in fact I rather love a collected works and the ability to sit and get overwhelmingly familiar with the work of a writer, but because I find collected poems in translation to be particularly challenging to pull off. Karanović’s poetry is a fascinating sampling, full with unique and sometimes bizarre imagery, with an ear for jokes intermixed within the stern lyric of survival in a harsh environment.
As a translator, Božičević did a spectacular job in order to capture the fluid translation of both seriousness and levity fond in Karanović’s work. I have heard that comedy is both the first and last thing to master when learning a new language — that often the first phrase one learns to fluency is a joke of some kind, and that like a parabola, the learning curve for some new language necessitates the loss of jokes in order to legitimize the practice of the formalities of a language. Only once you’ve grown comfortable enough with a language can you return to jokes once more and understand how one might be made in this new world. Božičević also has a slew of additional publications that are spectacular in their own rights, that you can witness below.
Her new book is New Life (Wave Books, 2023).
She is also the author of Povratak lišća /Return of the Leaves, Selected Poems in Croatian (Hrvatsko Društvo Pisaca/Croatian Writers Society, 2020);
Joy of Missing Out (Birds, LLC, 2017);
the Lambda Award-winning Rise in the Fall (Birds, LLC, 2013),
Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009).
Thank you, if you’ve read this far down in the exploration. You’ve been witness to sixteen additional presses found purely off of four books, five individuals, with translations from dozens of countries, across six genres.
Translation is a true form of magic in this day-and-age when information is so accessible and yet people are so inaccessible. This gilded paradox belittles the human endeavor toward connection, and I aim that little by little, these types of explorations can embolden toward a bubbled landscape, flush with joy.