E. Rowan Mena

Poetry International Festival

May 19, 2010 by E. Rowan

So Poetry International Web, who I am liking more and more as they gather momentum and even more great (and well organized) international poetry on their website, has a new blog in conjunction with the 2010 Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam. I just moved 1,800 miles across the U.S. back to Boston for the year, so I haven’t had a chance to read it as thoroughly as I would like, but they have an intriguing entry on Prose, poetry and […]

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Croatian Love Call

May 5, 2010 by E. Rowan

Just a quick note to say that Poetry International Web’s poem of the week is a fantastic prose poem by a Croatian poet Dubravko Deton, translated by Miloš Djurdjevic. Love call I will clothe myself in your voice, in your voice, and invisibly I will go out into the street. I will stand there with your voice, with your voice inside me, and houses will pass me by like tired, half-sunken steamships. And it will last a hundred years, a […]

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New computer, new translations, new (old) city

May 5, 2010 by E. Rowan

So I got my computer fixed (love AppleCare!) but have not been diligent about writing. I think it’s because I’ve been writing so much for school, that to write additionally seems, well, pointless. But I did just finish a draft of a paper on collaborative translation, which I think will start making it’s way here. There was a phenomenal discussion on the ALTAlk yahoo groups listserv (which I now moderate also) on this process of translating from a language you […]

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Reading The World: Suzanne Jill Levine

April 2, 2010 by E. Rowan

First, a short apology. My hard drive died recently, and I have been sadly behind on just about everything as a result. I do have some things that I’ve been meaning to write about a bit more, so will hope to get to that soon! In the meantime, the latest episode of Reading The World is out, and we talk with Suzanne Jill Levine about The Subversive Scribe, the Borges series she’s editing and a lot else. Give it a […]

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Accessible Poetry

March 21, 2010 by E. Rowan

My mother, who reads the NYTimes every Sunday, often sends me articles she thinks I’ll be interested in (and usually she’s right!). This morning I logged into my email to find a link to an article in the NY / Region section on the current poet laureate of Brooklyn Tina Chang. The NYTimes celebrates her for her accessibility, her multiculturalism and her ambition to make poetry part of the everyday, to “demystify the role of the poet.” A goal worthy […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: NYTimes, poetry, writing

Bolaño – A stranger

March 15, 2010 by E. Rowan

Since I won’t have the chance to publish my full translation of Roberto Bolaño’s poem “Tales of the Autumn in Gerona“, which also means I won’t get a forum to talk about the various choices I made, I thought I’d talk a bit about it here. It may be interesting, or it may be self-indulgent. We’ll see. The first section of this poem was actually somewhat problematic. It sets the tone and introduces the ‘characters’ that will appear and reappear […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Bolaño, poetry, translation, Words without Borders

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Writers Resources

March 15, 2010 by E. Rowan

So I tend to gather a lot of information – mostly by spending way too much time surfing the web. But there are a couple of things that I tend to over and over again share with my other writer/translator friends. And I thought I’d put them here too, for easy reference for future sharing. The Creative Writers Opportunities List (CRWROPPS-B) is a yahoo groups listserv that lists a lot of interesting opportunities for creative writers including contests, grants, fellowships, […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: CRWROPPS, Duotrope, Resources

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New Reading the World – Organizational Principles

March 9, 2010 by E. Rowan

Just a quick note during the craziness of my week-before-spring-break to say that the second episode of Reading the World Podcast is up on ITunes! In this one Chad Post and I talk to Susan Harris, Editor of Words Without Borders, about teaching translation and organizational principles. It was a great conversation!!

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Chad Post, Reading the World, Susan Harris, Words without Borders

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Crac, sounds your heart.

March 2, 2010 by E. Rowan

So yesterday two things happened. The first was something I had been looking forward to for some time: the publication of an excerpt of “Tales from the Autumn in Gerona” by Roberto Bolaño (from Tres) in my translation in Words Without Borders. And by a long time, I mean a year and a half. Not through any fault of anyone, just the rights with something like this get very, very, very complicated. And so it takes a lot of time. […]

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Language Police on The Second Sex

February 18, 2010 by E. Rowan

It’s great to see works of literary translation carefully reviewed. (And I include philosophy, theory and creative non-fiction in my definition of literary. In fact, I define literary translation as the translation of any text that requires careful attention to style.) But ouch. Following a rather academic summary of de Beauvoir’s seminal The Second Sex, the reviewer of the new translation picks apart the translators’ work. I don’t read French at the level required to engage with de Beauvoir in […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: language police, Lawrence Venuti, reviews, Simone de Beauvoir, translation

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