Guatemala | Prose Poem | Spanish
September, 2019I met the Garifuna poet Wingston González in the fall of 2013 when I was living in Berlin and he was passing through for a poetry festival. We ended up collaborating on the translation featured here and the years passed. Earlier this year, I was overjoyed to see that Ugly Duckling Presse had published a book of his poetry. I'm happy to add “Whiskey against the Rage Machine” to his body of work now available in English.
- Priscilla Posada
100 Refutations | Guatemala | Poetry | Spanish
July, 2018Enrique Noriega is a Guatemalan poet and the director of Guatemala’s Dependency Ministry Unit for the Promotion of Books and Reading. He has published many poetry collections, including Oh banalidad (1973), Post actus (1982), Libreta del centauro copulante (1994), La pasión según Judas (1998), El cuerpo que se cansa (1998), Libro caliente voz de hielo (1999), La saga de n (2006), Épica del ocio (2007), Lo que la memoria viste y calza (2012), and Guastatoya (2015). Noriega has also won numerous awards, including the Mesoamerican Poetry Prize “Luis Cardoza y Aragón” (2007, 2012), the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature (2010), and the Rubén Darío prize for poetry (2013).
100 Refutations | Guatemala | Poetry | Spanish
July, 2018Rafael Landívar (1731-1793) was a Guatemalan poet and Jesuit priest. He was born in what was then called La Capitanía de Guatemala, and is now the territory of Guatemala, southern Mexico, and Antigua, and he died in Italy. He was a descendant of the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo, and chose philosophy as his primary field of study. In 1749, he joined a Jesuit order and began working soon thereafter on what would become Rusticatio Mexicana, 15 books of poetry describing the regional fauna, flora, and customs using Latin hexameter. This text was translated into Spanish in 1897 by Antonio Ramírez Fontecha, in order to present it in the Exposición Centroamericana of the same year.
100 Refutations | Guatemala | Poetry | Spanish
June, 2018María Josefa García Granados (1796-1848) was one of Guatemala’s principal literary figures despite the many limitations placed on her due to her gender and the customs of the time. She carved out for herself an important place in the poetic scene, publishing widely—first under a male pseudonym and then under her own name—and founding two newspapers. She was a renowned feminist ahead of her time and the co-author of one of the most scandalous pieces of Guatemalan literature, described by many as a pornographic piece of ingenious craftsmanship and superb rhyme, which she dedicated to the clergyman, José María Castilla. She was also the sister of the first liberal president of Guatemala, Miguel Garcia Granados. Because of her many important political connections, she had to flee her country and live in a semi-voluntary exile during a volatile political period that did not favor her brother.
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.
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).