The two poems featured here come from Andrea Cote Botero’s first book, Puerto calcinado [Port in Ashes] (2013), winner of the Puentes de Sturga International Poetry Prize. At first glance, this title seems out of place given that the poet’s native Barrancabermeja conjures up no images of coastline, but rather is most known for a 1998 civilian massacre, one of the most deadly of Colombia’s armed conflict. The poetic voice’s reflection around the port as a place of both arrival and departure, turns illusory, no more than a fleeting bridge to someplace else, or perhaps this place itself. What most stands out, then, is uncertainty, destruction of space, searches for lost identities, labyrinthine memory, and longings for gods--and others--gone missing. The poems take on rhythm and pace while the poetic self explores all this from every possible angle. For Cote Botero’s poetic subject, the port is connection--to now barren terrain, a lost homeland, and María--a connection only truly achieved in the ephemeral uttering of a poem.
Likewise, emphasis on connection, on bridge-building, guides my approach to translating Cote Botero. She has been doubly underrepresented in translation: first, as a woman, given that women are far less likely than men to be translated into English (and even less frequently by a woman); and, second, as a Colombian, since poetry from the region is the second-least translated into English among all Spanish-speaking countries. In fact, according to the Three Percent Translation Database, from 2008 to 2018 no book-length translation of a Colombian woman poet has been published in the United States. Given these conditions, I view the choice of who to translate as an act of bridge-building, forging connections between places and readerships that might not otherwise come into contact. The question of how to translate this voice, then, becomes bridge-crossing, the process of carrying what makes Cote Botero’s poetry so compelling into English, allowing its complexity to find its footing in new linguistic terrain. In this way, the bridge Cote Botero and I build through translation is far from illusory: these two poems intend to highlight marginalized voices, complicate notions of how Colombians--and women--are expected to write, and forge strong, long-lasting literary connections.
- Olivia Lott
100 Refutations | Essay | Poetry
July, 2018To conclude the 100 Refutations series, we offer you a final essay by Lina M. Ferreira C.-V.
– InTranslation editors
100 Refutations | Poetry | Spanish
July, 2018Cacamatzin (1483-1520) was born into the most illustrious family of Tezcoco, a region known for its many wise governors and celebrated poets. He was the grandson of the famous poet-king Nezahualtcóyotl and son of the famous Lord of Tezcoco Nezahualpilli, whom Cacamatzin eventually replaced. As Lord of Tezcoco, Cacamatzin was unable to stop the invasion of gold-hungry Hernán Cortes and his conquistadors. In 1520, Cacamatzin was captured, tortured, and killed under the direction of Alvarado, whom Cortes left in charge before going on to commit further atrocities in the land of the Aztecs and beyond.
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 | Paraguay | Poetry | Spanish
July, 2018Eloy Fariña Nuñez (1885-1929) studied in the Paraná seminary in Argentina, but soon thereafter traded his aspirations of an ecclesiastical career for a law career in Buenos Aires. He was eventually forced to abandon his studies for financial reasons, but this allowed him to dedicate himself wholly to the pursuit of arts and letters. He was a poet, storyteller, essayist, dramaturge, and journalist. He is often referred to as the greatest poet of Paraguay.
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 | Paraguay | Poetry | Spanish
July, 2018Manuel Ortiz Guerrero (1897-1933) was a poet, playwright, and musician. He was born in Villarrica, Paraguay and began to gain some popularity after the publication of one of his earliest poems, “Loca,” featured in the journal Letras. He was the founder of the literary journal Órbita, and his verses were often accompanied by the music of his friend José Asunción Flores. Guerrero published numerous works of poetry, prose, and drama in his lifetime, and two of his books were published posthumously. He was also the composer of the song “India,” which was later declared the national song by the Paraguayan government. He died of leprosy in the company of his lifelong partner, Dalmacia.
100 Refutations | Poetry | Spanish
July, 2018This poem tells the traditional Guaraní story of the creation of language as relayed over the course of hundreds of years. According to Alfredo López Austin, writing in La Literatura De Los Guaraníes (1965), the language formed in this myth by the great Creator is “the future essence of human souls.” Immediately after creating language, the great Creator decides to make the love human beings can feel for one another.
100 Refutations | Essay | Poetry
June, 2018Welcome to the fourteenth and final week (plus two days) 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 fourteenth one is featured here.
– InTranslation editors
100 Refutations | Poetry | Spanish | Venezuela
June, 2018Andrés Mata (1870-1931) is considered the initiator of the Modernist movement in Venezuela. His early writing was influenced by Victor Hugo, Nuñez de Arce, and Diaz Mirón, as well as his contemporaries Chocano and Lugones. Julio Planchart, writing in Antología de La Poesia Hispanoamericana (1965), asserted that Mata “belonged very much to his time in his continuous effort to find in his verses a fine and external musicality” and a “vague and internal sentiment which would echo that musicality.” This, Planchart concluded, showed that Mata truly embodied the Modernist movement.
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).