100 Refutations | Argentina | Poetry | Spanish
April, 2018Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938) was serendipitously born in Sala Capriasca, Switzerland during a brief family trip abroad. She is considered one of the foremost poets in all of Latin American literature. She had to earn a living from a very early age and worked as a traveling actress at the age of thirteen, later as a school teacher at nineteen, and as a salesgirl in Buenos Aires until the age of twenty-five. Her luck changed after the publication of her first book, which rightfully received wide acclaim. According to the Antologia de la Poesia Hispanoamericana, she spoke alongside Gabriela Mistral and Juana de Ibarbourou at a 1938 event hosted by the Ministerio de Instrucción Pública de Urugay. That same year, at the age of 46 and knowing herself to be incurably ill with breast cancer, Storni committed suicide in Mar del Plata, Argentina.
100 Refutations | Guatemala | Song Lyrics | Spanish
April, 2018Rebeca Eunice Vargas (Rebeca Lane) was born in Guatemala City in 1984. She's a prolific poet and musician heavily influenced by her experiences as a political and human rights activist. As a poet, Lane has been published in several magazines in Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, and maintains a blog called Mujeres de bolsa grande y zapatos bajos. Lane’s poetry led her to spoken word, and through her work as a collaborator in Da-Radio (an online hip-hop radio station) she joined the hip-hop collective Última Dosis. In 2012, she began recording rap songs, singing with Última Dosis and as a soloist. In 2013, she began touring Central America and Mexico after the release of her EP Canto. Lane has performed at important music and art festivals throughout Latin America, as well as festivals, seminars, and theatrical events focused on human rights and feminism. She currently performs as a member of the theater and hip-hop crew that created La Eskina (2014), in which the cast uses graffiti, rap, and breakdancing to confront violence against youth in marginalized regions of Guatemala City. Lane is the founder of the movement Somos Guerreras, which strives to create a community of women within hip-hop culture that pushes back against inequality and sexism in the industry. She also runs rap workshops with women and young people, encouraging the use of poetry to express the struggles of the oppressed. In 2014, Lane won first place in the contest Proyecto L, which sought out music supporting freedom of speech, with the song "Cumbia de la Memoria." In this song, Lane discusses the genocide perpetrated by the military government during the war. For more information, please see: http://www.rebecalane.com.
100 Refutations | Peru | Poetry | Spanish
April, 2018César Vallejo was born in Santiago de Chuco, Peru in 1892 and died in Paris in 1938. According to the Antologia de la Poesia Hispanoamericana, “In 1923, after publishing his second book, Trilce, which placed him at the forefront of the poetic Peruvian vanguard, he left for Europe never to return.” The death of his mother, a bohemian reputation, and an “unfortunate incident which landed him in prison for four months,” are often cited as the reasons for his self-imposed exile. “After a long poetic silence, as if urged by the presentiment of death, he wrote—in just a few months—the 'Human Poems' which would be published posthumously [… and which] you can barely speak [of] as poetry, they are the sharp and torn expression of the pain of, not the individual, but our species.”
100 Refutations | Panama | Poetry | Spanish
April, 2018Gaspar Octavio Hernández (1893-1918) was born in Panama City and worked as a journalist while writing poetry until the age of twenty-five, when, according to Antologia de la Poesia Hispanoamericana, he died “painfully during a fit of Hemoptysis […] while editing the ‘Star of Panama.’” He was a dedicated editor, an ambitious poet, and a prolific writer, best known for “Canto a la Bandera,” “Melodías del Pasado,” “Cristo y la mujer de Sichar,” “La copa de amatista,” and “Iconografías.”
100 Refutations | Bolivia | Poetry (excerpt) | Spanish
April, 2018Mercedes Belzú de Dorado was born in La Paz, Bolivia in 1835, and died in 1879 at the age of 44. She was the daughter of the general Manuel Isidoro Belzú, a one-time president of Bolivia, and the acclaimed Argentine novelist, Juana Manuela Gorriti. She was a writer, poet, and translator of varied works, including those authored by Víctor Hugo, Lamartine, and Shakespeare.
100 Refutations | Poetry (excerpt) | Spanish
April, 2018The poem featured here was written by an unknown Guaraní poet.
100 Refutations | Essay | Poetry
April, 2018Welcome to the second week of 100 Refutations. For one hundred days, we're publishing a daily poem from one of the countries recently denigrated by the president of the United States. Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., who conceived and compiled the series and translated many of its poems, has been working tirelessly on this enormous project, with the help of several collaborators, since the president’s comments in January. We're accompanying the daily poems with a weekly essay by Lina, and the second one is featured here.
– InTranslation editors
100 Refutations | Nicaragua | Poetry | Spanish
April, 2018Joaquín Pasos (1914-1947) was born in Granada, Nicaragua, studied law at the University of Managua, and was part of the Nicaraguan Movimiento de Vanguardia. He wrote plays, poems, and essays, and was occasionally incarcerated for his involvement in satirical work mocking the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García. In Poemas de un joven, Ernesto Cardenal wrote that Pasos’s poetry was “cheerful, like the Nicaraguan people [who], despite all they have suffered, remain always cheerful.”
100 Refutations | Cuba | Poetry | Spanish
April, 2018Juana Borrero was born in Havana in 1877 and died in Key West in 1896 at the age of nineteen. She was born into a family of intellectuals: her father and all her siblings wrote verses which were later compiled and published under the title Versos familiares.
100 Refutations | Canada | English | Poetry | Venezuela
April, 2018María José Giménez is a Venezuelan-Canadian poet, translator, and editor working in English, Spanish, and French. Assistant Translation Editor for Anomaly (fka Drunken Boat), María José is a recipient of the 2016 Gabo Prize for Translation and fellowships from the NEA, The Banff International Literary Translation Centre, and the Katherine Bakeless Nason Endowment. Published translations include Edurne Pasaban’s memoir Tilting at Mountains (Mountaineers Books, 2014), Alejandro Saravia’s novel Red, Yellow, Green (Biblioasis, 2017), and a chapbook of poems by Mara Pastor, As Though the Wound Had Heard (Cardboard House Press, 2017). Learn more at mariajosetranslates.com.
The Brooklyn Rail welcomes you to our web-exclusive section InTranslation, where we feature unpublished translations of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. Published since April 2007, InTranslation is a venue for outstanding work in translation and a resource for translators, authors, editors, and publishers seeking to collaborate.
We seek exceptional unpublished English translations from all languages.
Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry: Manuscripts of no longer than 20 pages (double-spaced).
Plays: Manuscripts of no longer than 30 pages (in left-justified format).