Category Archives: Translation

Los Surcos del Azar

March 9, 2017 by Erica Mena

One of my very favorite things about translating is how hard it is. As any five translators to work on the same sentence and you’ll get five different results, all of them perfectly legitimate and yet none the same. There are a ton of great translation theorists who talk about this (many of whom I’ve been teaching this semester in the phenomenal translation theory class I’m doing with the Low Residency MFA in Literary Translation at Mills College!), but that […]

Categories: Translation • Tags: antonio machado, erica mena, literary translation, poetry, poetry translation, translation

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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CFP: Queering Translation – Translating the Queer

March 3, 2014 by Erica Mena

Oh boy does this sound great! Call for papers: Queering Translation – Translating the Queer Centre for Translation Studies, University of Vienna 26-28 March 2015 Aim and Theme of the Conference: Since de Lauretis introduced queer theory as „another discursive horizon, another way of thinking the sexual“ (1991:iv), this approach has played an important role in the analysis of sex and gender in Literary, Film and Cultural Studies. Despite its claim of interdisciplinarity, Translation Studies has yet to fully integrate […]

Categories: Call for Papers, Translation • Tags: conference, queer, queer literature, translation, world literature

Trapped in a translation binary

August 9, 2013 by Erica Mena

I’ve only just read Adam Plunkett’s review of Merwin’s Selected Translations for The New Republic. Plunkett seems to be trapped in a couple of typical binaries, the first and most obvious when considering works of translated literature: faithfulness and departure. Plunkett spends a good part of the review taking Merwin to task for not being faithful to the originals, but unlike other reviewers who fall into this trap, he actually attempts to define what he means by faithful. Plunkett is […]

Categories: Translation

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Fortino Sámano by Virginie Lalucq

April 25, 2013 by Erica Mena

This complicated little book is actually two in one – a poem and an “overflowing” of the poem, a poem and its poetic exegesis. The first section is an ekphrastic poem written by Virginie Laluq and translated by Sylvain Gallais, written in response to a photograph of the Mexican guerilla and counterfeiter moments before his execution by firing squad. I have not seen this photograph (in fact, when I googled it while writing this, the page refused to respond, and asked me several […]

Categories: Reading Journal, Translation • Tags: art, cynthia hogue, ekphrasis, fortino samano, jean-lug nancy, philosophy, poetry, sylvain gallais, translation, virginie lalucq

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Mundo Cruel by Luis Negrón, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine

April 1, 2013 by Erica Mena

I don’t read very much fiction nowadays, or at least not very much ‘literary’ fiction, that is, unless I’m translating it. It’s the sad reality of being an overstretched graduate student that I’ve had to narrow my reading down to poetry, contemporary poetry, contemporary innovative poetry, contemporary primarily women’s innovative poetry and even then I have a stack of books I’m unlikely to get through in the next year. Well, sad and exhilarating. But when the advance proof for Mundo Cruel […]

Categories: Reading Journal, Translation • Tags: fiction, luis negron, mundo cruel, puerto rican literature, Puerto Rico, reading journal, seven stories, short stories, suzanne jill levine, translation

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Thoughts on Length and Translation

February 19, 2013 by Erica Mena

So I’m not even sure I’m supposed to be writing about this, but I think it’s ok because I’m not talking about specific books. I once again have the privilege of being on the judging committee for the Best Translated Book Award in Poetry. This is my third year, and this year we’ve gotten the most submissions for poetry that we’ve had so far. Which I take to be an excellent sign that more and more publishers are taking the “risk” and […]

Categories: Poetry, Translation • Tags: awards, collections, poetry, short books, translation

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Anomalous 7: Translation

November 16, 2012 by Erica Mena

Well, despite all sorts of technical difficulties including no internet this week, we launched the newest, latest issue of Anomalous! And I’m so happy about this issue. It has some really amazing artwork by Mike Edrington, for starters: After Life, a series of photographs made at the University of Iowa Natural History Museum and super eerie. It also has one of the coolest translation features we’ve done. Last year I read engulf — enkindle by Anja Utler translated by Kurt Beals (Burning Deck) […]

Categories: Poetry, Publishing, Translation • Tags: alexander blok, anja ulter, Anomalous, Anomalous Press, brandon holmquest, burning deck, engulf enkindle, essay, experimental, fiction, gaston fernandez, german, german poetry, interactive poetry, jen zoble, jennifer zoble, Kurt Beals, melina kameric, memoir, mike edrington, multiple translation, non-fiction, online journal, online literary journal, online magazine, online publishing, pierre menard, poetry, prose, russell scott valentino, russell valentino, russian, serbo-croatian, serbo-croatian fiction, serbo-croatian literature, short story, spanish, translation

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Begin Again

November 2, 2012 by Erica Mena

Well, it’s been a while. I moved, twice, landing in Providence, where I’m happily reading and writing away towards an MFA in poetry at Brown. So I think the tenor of this is exploration is going to shift a little for me. I’m still deeply engaged in translation (I have some new translation work out in Words Without Borders – stunning short story by Ricardo Menéndez Salmón I’ve translated as Life in Flames), that will be apparent. And I’m still invested in […]

Categories: Poetry, Publishing, Translation • Tags: Anomalous, Anomalous Press, brown, erica mena, MFA, poet, poetry, Pushcart, pushcart rankings

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