Uncategorized | E. Rowan Mena

Merwin

July 8, 2010 by E. Rowan

As I’ve mentioned, I’m in Corfu, and so somehow missed the news last week that W.S. Merwin is the new U.S. poet laureate. Merwin is almost solely responsible for the course my life has taken, and since I’m convinced I have few if any readers, I feel no qualms about sharing the story here. I’ve been trying to write a poem for him for years. Maybe someday I’ll get there, but for now, memoir it will be. At fifteen I had very […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: poet laureate, poetry, translation, W.S. Merwin

Reading the World 5: Bill Johnston

July 7, 2010 by E. Rowan

There is an excuse for the irregularity with which I’ve been writing. Several, in fact, the most recent of which is that I’m in Greece attending the University of Iowa’s Overseas Writing Workshop. Corfu, to be precise, and it’s awfully hard to remember there are more important things than talking about translation and poetry in the shade after swimming in the Ionian Sea. But, the new Reading the World Podcast finally made it up! This is the last of the […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Bill Johnston, Chad Post, Reading the World, Three Percent, translation

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Spectacularly Bad

July 5, 2010 by E. Rowan

I’ve discovered the best writing contest, or at least, the only one I have any chance of winning. It is the Bulwer-Lytton prize for the “worst opening sentence” presumably of a work of fiction. I’ve long dreamed of a forum to publish the bad writing I’ve come across in my various positions of editorial gate-keeper. In fact, in my first editorial role at my undergraduate literary journal there was a poem so spectacularly bad that the poetry editor and I […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: bad writing, contests

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Screening

June 25, 2010 by E. Rowan

I recently learned to silkscreen, and the first project I did was a fantastic letter-press printed (that I set and printed) manifesto called “Writers Fear No Wild Beast More Than The Mucogenerative Cave Organism Called In The Common Speech ‘Translation.’ A Manifesto.” It was co-authored by last year’s editors of the University of Iowa journal of literary translation eXchanges, Sara Gilmore and Mike Schorsch. So we screenprinted the eXchanges logo, (“=”), on the front of them, and handed them out […]

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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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E. Rowan Mena

Poet | Book Artist | Translator

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Merwin

Reading the World 5: Bill Johnston

Spectacularly Bad

Screening

Poetry International Festival

Croatian Love Call

New computer, new translations, new (old) city

Reading The World: Suzanne Jill Levine

Accessible Poetry

Bolaño – A stranger