Erica Mena

Poet | Book Artist | Translator

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Category Archives: Poetry

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Experimental Poets of Color

September 19, 2016 by Erica Mena

Up until a few years ago I thought I had to choose between being a “Puerto Rican poet” and being an “experimental poet.” Puerto Rican poets write about things like their abuela, or El Morro, o la isla, o salsa, o Nuevayork, o cualquier cosa. It probably didn’t help that the only Puerto Rican poet writing in English I knew, knew of, or had ever heard of was Martín Espada, whose work is exceptional and beautiful and extremely lyrical and more or less […]

Categories: Poetry, Teaching • Tags: experimental poetry, poetry, teaching

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Canyon in the Body by Lan Lan translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain

February 9, 2015 by Erica Mena

In many ways this book is exactly what I expected. It is a collection of beautiful, light, lyric poems, in a very traditional translation that is beautiful, light, lyric and focused on image and meaning and very occasionally sound. If this appeals to you, you will love this book. For me, though, there wasn’t much beyond a few occasional moments that really grabbed me about it. Lan Lan is clearly a finely attenuated poet, one who puts great care into the […]

Categories: Poetry, Reviews • Tags: canyon in the body, chines poetry, contemporary poetry, fiona sze-lorrain, lan lan, literary translation, poetry, translation, zephyr press

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"All good poetry is experimental"

January 20, 2015 by Erica Mena

I recently had the humbling experience of doing poorly on an interview for something I really wanted. I actually interview terribly, so it’s not really surprising to me, but still disappointing nonetheless. One of the members of the committee interviewing me is a poet I’ve admired for a long time, who’s work I’ve studied and taught, and I’m sure that didn’t make things any easier, nerves-wise. One of the questions posed to me that I hadn’t anticipated, hadn’t even ever […]

Categories: Poetry • Tags: citizen, claudia rankine, experimental poetry, poetry, susan howe

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Diana's Tree by Alejandra Pizarnik, translated by Yvette Siegert

January 10, 2015 by Erica Mena

After reading Diana’s Tree by Alejandra Pizarnik, in Yvette Siegert’s translation, all the way through in one sitting, I wanted immediately to read it again. It’s a slim volume of equally slim poems, but they’re the kind of sparing that is deceptive. I hadn’t read much Pizarnik before, I’d seen her pop up in anthologies and translation workshops, I can’t tell you how many emerging translators I know who’ve started with her work. But, I think mostly because of estate issues and […]

Categories: Poetry, Reviews, Translation • Tags: alejandra pizarnik, diana's tree, literary translation, poetry, translation, ugly duckling, yvette siegert

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Translation is a Compromised Body

October 23, 2014 by Erica Mena

Some smartening of some stuff I said about translation and poetry and compromised bodies at a poetry-gathering last week in LA made its way onto the Poetry Foundation blog. Amanda says these things way smarter than I think I did, though. “Here is what Erica Mena (of Anomalous) discussed in response to these questions (of course, this is just a summary, and many parts are missing): She wanted to contest the idea of translation as a the idea of equivalence—one […]

Categories: Poetry, Translation • Tags: experimental poetry, experimental translation, poetry, translation

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Poetry in the Streets (of Seattle)

February 23, 2014 by Erica Mena

I have a bad habit, it’s something I can’t really help. I have extraordinarily good hearing, and like many introverts, I’m especially observant in public. I notice a lot of little things all the time, and have mostly learned to tune out (to some degree) other people’s conversations. But I can’t do it when they’re talking about poetry. I have another bad habit, one that I suspect is common to those in my general demographic – MFA-land educated writers. When […]

Categories: Poetry • Tags: AWP14, James Franco, poetry, Seattle

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Not Everyone Gets To Be A Poet

February 7, 2014 by Erica Mena

Anyone who’s been in the academic world as a graduate student recognizes a general malaise that kicks in right about now. The sense of the imminent end of the semester, the end of the degree program for many (and for me this year), the end of funding, the end of certainty. For those still in grad school, but whose funding changes from year to year; for those leaving grad school and entering the whatever-comes-next phase for them; for those with […]

Categories: Poetry • Tags: academia, depression, poetry

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Don't Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine

December 3, 2013 by Erica Mena

Is it a prose poem? A lyric essay? A hybrid essay-poem? A hybrid poem-memoir? Yes. I’ve long contended that genre is mostly useful to define reading strategy (define? demand? encourage?). We read a poem differently than we do a memoir. Or an essay. And I’ve also suggested to my non-fiction writing friends that poetry and non-fiction have more in common than most realize. Except for those working between those forms: Susan Howe, Anna Joy Springer. Poetry lends a freedom that […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: claudia rankine, don't let me be lonely, lyric essay, poetry, political poetry, prose poetry, september 11

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Vanity Presses, Self-Publishing & The Antigone Poems by Marie Slaight

August 26, 2013 by Erica Mena

I just received an advance review copy of The Antigone Poems by Marie Slaight, forthcoming in January from Altaire Productions & Publications. I wasn’t surprised that I hadn’t heard of the poet or the press, they are in Australia and it’s a sad reality that very few books published outside the US gain any real attention here. There are a handful of UK presses I know and love, because I lived there briefly, and I’ve worked hard to gain expertise in […]

Categories: Poetry, Publishing, Reading Journal, Reviews • Tags: altaire productions, marie slaight, poetry, self publishing, self-published, terrance hasker, the antigone poems, vanity press

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To Do As Adam Did by Ronald Johnson

May 8, 2013 by Erica Mena

The introduction to this book did exactly what any introduction to a selection of poetry should do: made me very, very excited to discover the poetry within. Contextualizing it in the Olsonian projective verse tradition, and then explaining how Johnson’s work evolved into the world-wide concrete poetry movement, before finally emerging into a “big” poem he imagined in the tradition of A, The Cantos, and The Maximus Poems. I was absolutely enticed, and some of my anxiety (that it was going to be […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: concrete poetry, experimental poetry, long poems, poetry, ronald johnson, to do as adam did

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@acyborgkitty

Resting after drafting my new work for sale posts. Patrons get first dibs tomorrow, then email newsletter, then on Instagram. Sign up for any at acyborgkitty.com
IT'S ALWAYS SUNSET IN THIS PLACE, 2021. French knots hand embroidered on antique photograph of Punkaharju, Finland. One of the new (k)not work pieces that will be for sale this week.
New work about to be dropped for sale this week. First to my @patreon patrons, then to my email newsletter (link in bio), then here on Instagram. Work from this new w@nder series, and some new (k)not work pieces too.
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