Poetry’s Geographies: A Transatlantic Anthology of Translations
Poetry’s Geographies: A Transatlantic Anthology of Translations
Book Cover
Edited by Katherine M. Hedeen and Zoë Skoulding
This anthology, featuring some of the most prominent poet-translators from both sides of the Atlantic, radically foregrounds the role of translators as bridge-builders and activists, with a crucial role in revealing the structures through which poetry moves and circulates. Organized around the translators (rather than the poets), with essays discussing the poetics and politics of their translations, this anthology forms unruly geographical lines of connection rather than underscoring existing national canons—shaping new understandings of contemporary poetry’s transnational commitments.
Born amid the shutting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the book celebrates the community of translation—as Skoulding writes in her introduction, a "chance to live in the multiplicity of languages and the spaces of relation that it opens up," and its tangibility and visibility. "Far from the smooth loops and starry clusters of international flight paths, the haphazard map made by these poets emerges erratically from chance encounters, personal synergies, political commitments and tangles of literary influence.”
Details
ISBN: 979-8-9863539-0-6
312 pages
Publication date: March 1, 2023
Poetry, essay
Reviews
Contributors
Kareem James Abu-Zeld, translating Najwan Darwish
Don Mee Choi, translating Kim Hyesoon
Sasha Dugdale, translating Maria Stepanova
Daniel Eltringham, translating Ana Maria Rodas
Forrest Gander, translating Coral Bracho
Johannes Gorranson, translating Eva Kristina Olsson
Katherine M. Heeden, translating Victor Rodriguez Nunez
Meena Kandasamy, translating Thiruvalluvar
Ghazal Mosadeq, translating Akhavan Sales
Erin Moure, translating Chus Pato
Zoe Skoulding, translating Fred Forte
Stephen Watts, translating Ziba Karbassi
“Intuit in this collection the shape of things whole, broken, unseen, seen, vibrating at a frequency heard through lilyears and lilyyears, untranslated and intranslated and translated and poeted.”
About the Editors
Katherine M. Hedeen is a translator of poetry, literary critic, and essayist. A specialist in Latin American poetry, she has translated some of the most respected voices from the region. Her publications include book-length collections by Jorgenrique Adoum, Juan Bañuelos, Juan Calzadilla, Antonio Gamoneda, Fina García Marruz, Juan Gelman, Raúl Gómez Jattin,Fayad Jamís,Hugo Mujica, José Emilio Pacheco, Víctor Rodríguez Núñez, and Ida Vitale, among many others. Her work has been a finalist for both the Best Translated Book Award and the National Translation Award. She is a recipient of two NEA Translation grants in the US and a PEN Translates award in the UK. She is a Managing Editor for Action Books. She resides in Gambier, Ohio, where she is Professor of Spanish at Kenyon College.
Zoë Skoulding is a poet and literary critic interested in translation, sound and ecology. She is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Bangor University. Her publications include poetry collections The Mirror Trade (2004); Remains of a Future City (2008); The Museum of Disappearing Sounds (2013); Footnotes to Water (2019); and, most recently, A Marginal Sea (2022). Her work has been shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry and Footnotes to Water won the Wales Book of the Year Poetry Award 2020. She is also a recipient of the Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2018 and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. Her critical work includes two monographs, Contemporary Women’s Poetry and Urban Space: Experimental Cities (2013), and Poetry & Listening: The Noise of Lyric (2020). Her current research project is Transatlantic Translation: Poetry in Circulation and Practice Across Languages (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, 2020-22), following the network Poetry in Expanded Translation 2017-2018. From 2009 to 2011 she was, in partnership with Literature Across Frontiers, director of Metropoetica, a collaborative project on translation, gender and city space. She was Editor of the international quarterly Poetry Wales 2008-2014 and co-founded the (North) Wales International Poetry Festival in 2012.
