Erica Mena

Poet | Book Artist | Translator

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Tag: erica mena

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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

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My Week In Books

March 13, 2015 by Erica Mena

Featherbone. from Featherbone: Searshut your throat & open soundless: again—it pierces your back— spins—you lurch and plummet— light is:      to blame you:      unother. The light is already bleaching your veins metasomatized —blooming in the cracks the fissures. This is my book, Featherbone. It’s a cyborg feminist retelling of Icarus, driven by compound neologisms. The cover art is by Wangechi Mutu, titled “Love’s a Witch, Orfeo’s Underworld Coronation for Euridice,” 2006. Mutu is a Kenyan-born artist and sculptor who resides in […]

Categories: Publishing, Uncategorized • Tags: Anomalous Press, arrowsmith press, askold melnyczuk, cole swenson, collier nogues, drown/sever/sing, drunken boat, erica mena, featherbone, frank andre jamme, ian hatcher, jorie graham, la presse, lina maria ferriera cabeza-vanegas, melissa green, poetry, the all-new, the ground i stand on is not my ground, to the secret

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That Time I Had To Look Up "thot"

January 27, 2015 by Erica Mena

I’ve been called many things by many people. I’ve also been called many things by many people who think I’m this Erica Mena, and not the Erica Mena I actually am. It’s because I have a googleganger. And it so happens that, though I am slightly older than her and so have our name on most social media platforms (from before I even knew about her), she is much more “famous.” I use the scare-quotes because she’s a reality TV […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: erica mena, feminism, feminist, googleganger, reality tv, slut-shaming

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The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley

March 22, 2013 by Erica Mena

A strange thing happened to me yesterday while I was finishing The Descent of Alette: I fell asleep. To be fair the carbon monoxide detector had gone off with it’s out-of-battery warning very late the night before, and I have a hard time falling asleep so getting interrupted set me back an hour or two. And it’s been surprisingly cold so I had the heat cranked up and was lying on my bed in front of the space heater where it was warm. […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: alice notley, contemporary epic, descent of alette, epic, erica mena, feminist, narrative poetry, poetry, reading journal

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The Sound Mirror by Andrew Joron

November 13, 2012 by Erica Mena

The insistant wordplay at first seems a little self-pleased, nearly insignificant. The challenge of what Joron is doing is to bridge the gap between seemingly-nonsensical wordplay and philosophical reflection. As the collection progresses and the sound becomes slightly more open, less enamored of itself, I am forced to slow down and engage with not just the sounds but the saying of the words. If two facing mirrors = infinity Then I have seen the back of your head, Beauty Hunter. […] His […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: andrew joron, erica mena, flood editions, philosophical poetry, philosophy, poetry, science fiction poetry, the sound mirror

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Micrographia by Emily Wilson

November 12, 2012 by Erica Mena

I got Emily Wilson’s books because I have a letterpressed broadside of hers, made by the inestimable Sara Langworthy, my  former printing teacher at the University of Iowa Center for the Book. The poem on the broadside is “Small Study,” and the language in it is so lush, so finely wrought, that I wanted to read more. She has two books, The Keep and Micrographia and though I’ve been reading The Keep (her first book) longer, I’ve found it much slower going. Micrographia however was a faster read. I […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: broadside, emily wilson, erica mena, micrographia, poetry, sara langworthy, the keep, university of iowa press

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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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Reading the World Podcast 10: Edith Grossman

January 20, 2012 by Erica Mena

After a hiatus, the Reading the World Podcast is thrilled to be back with the support of the University of California Irvine’s International Center for Writing and Translation. In this new episode, translator Edith Grossman talks about her recent book Why Translation Matters, her translations of Luis de Gongora’s Soledades (The Solitudes) and her forthcoming translation, The Depths of Time by Antonio Muñoz Molina. Last April during (but unrelated to) PEN World Voices, I (Erica Mena) had the great pleasure of meeting with Edith Grossman. Edith Grossman, in […]

Categories: Podcasts • Tags: anna guercio, anna rosen guercio, edith grossman, erica mena, interview, literary translation, podcast, Reading the World, reading the world podcast, Three Percent, translation

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On The Eternonaut

January 12, 2012 by Erica Mena

I have a blog post up at Words Without Borders on The Eternonaut. The title is a portmanteau, combining “eter” and “astronauta.” I created a similarly constructed English portmanteau combining “eternal” and “astronaut,” changing the “a” in “eternal” for the “o” in “astro” to create the prefix “eterno,” reminiscent of “cosmonaut” also. Since the words are cognates, I could have left it as The Ethernaut, but the emphasis on the first syllable in this word seems uncomfortable in English. Naturalness in English […]

Categories: Translation • Tags: comics, el eternauta, erica mena, eternauta, graphic novel, hector oesterheld, science fiction, solano lopez, the eternonaut, translation, translator, Words without Borders

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The Eternonaut

January 5, 2012 by Erica Mena

An excerpt from The Eternonaut (the graphic novel I’ve been translating for my thesis) was just published on Words Without Borders as part of their Apocalypse themed issue. Here’s a little from my introduction to the work on the site: The Eternonaut does what science fiction can do so well, asks hard questions about the world, and wonders what we can do to change things. At the end, the comic writer wonders, is telling the story enough? Perhaps not, but then again, […]

Categories: Comics, Translation • Tags: apocalypse, comics, el eternauta, erica mena, eternauta, eternonaut, francisco solano lopez, graphic novel, hector german oesterheld, hector oesterheld, oesterheld, science fiction, solano lopez, the eternonaut, translation, Words without Borders

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