Palabras Errantes Latin American Literature in Translation
Uruguayan Women Writers
Wolf to Man
By Inés Bortagaray. Translated by Dunja Fehimovic. español Ludmila opened the door and exaggerated her outrage by squeezing her chin against her chest and opening her arms in a pontifical posture. ‘Let me know the next time you’re going to arrive an hour late… So inconsiderate.’ Muriel came in on her tiptoes looking down at […]
Translating Uruguayan Women Writers
By Cherilyn Elston And walking through the gardens of Buckingham Palace I said to you: “And it is not necessary to walk through Europe to fill poems with traditional names”. You looked at me offended, because at five you had a date with William Blake’s tomb. In her poem ‘Simple landscape’ Cristina Peri […]
Contemporary Uruguayan Women’s Writing
By Dr María Soledad Montañez, Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies, University of Stirling ‘There’s no river, no square, no church, no nothing. This house is the whole world’: Contemporary Uruguayan Women’s Writing (version en español) The notion of literary or cultural generations, as a model of periodisation, is an appealing as well as questionable topic […]
Lunatics
By Inés Bortagaray. Translated by Dunja Fehimovic and Christopher Schafenacker. I I could say that those peering out from the shadows are Guaraníes: that it’s them who hide behind trees, watching visitors with silent stares and sandpaper palms and knees poised to take quick, furtive, Guaraní steps. But I know nothing about the Guaraní, nor […]
The Boy with the Moccasins
By Inés Bortagaray. Translated by Dunja Fehimovic. español We walk under the trees on a freezing June day. We move forward in silence and hear the rustle of the grass dampened by an intermittent drizzle that fell in the afternoon. I look at his black moccasins, so ill suited to walking in the mountains. A touchingly formal pair […]
The Measure Of My Love
By Fernanda Trías. Translated by Claire Parsons. She remembered that night because of the issue of the presents. When they fought, and he threw her out, he always made her return the gifts. Above all, she remembered the boots; the first present given to her on her 32nd birthday. She remembered this because, that night, before […]
Under One Roof – Chapter One
By Fernanda Trías. Translated by Maya Feile Tomes. español If they came in right now they’d find me flat on my back in exactly the same position as when I flopped down on the bed at around midnight last night. Eleven thirty-eight, to be precise – that’s when I looked at the clock for the […]
Under One Roof – Chapter Two
By Fernanda Trías. Translated by Maya Feile Tomes. Five or six months pregnant – I can’t have been any further along than that: I was in the kitchen, cooking meat for myself and carrot purée for dad, whose diet consisted solely of vegetables. Only that morning I’d joked that, what with all the vegetables he […]
The Letters Didn’t Warn Me
By Xime de Coster. Translated by Cherilyn Elston, Claire Parsons and Laura Cann. The letters didn’t warn me that the hand of god would come in the form of a wall to crash into my face, bleeding heavily until I realized that it doesn’t pay to be a poet, in any shape or form. […]
Go to Hell
By Xime de Coster. Translated by Cherilyn Elston, Claire Parsons and Laura Cann. “What is silence? The crowd gave a solitary howl in the room of niches” Yván Silén You have written and they have not gouged your eyes out? they have not amputated your legs they have not forgotten you, far away, in […]
To Relieve the Pain
By Xime de Coster. Translated by Cherilyn Elston, Claire Parsons and Laura Cann. To relieve the pain, I went for a walk in the neighbourhood, looking for some fucking graffiti to take pictures and I didn’t find not even a single beautiful bit spat on the wall. It’s not the neighbourhood’s fault the fault […]
Sleepwalking Poetry to Succumb to…
By Xime de Coster. Translated by Cherilyn Elston, Claire Parsons Dominguez and Laura Cann. Sleepwalking poetry to succumb to and the mind to rest. A phrase, a solstice, a breeze, an open space, a mist, a microchip placed in the hand that warns the next with a user’s handbook as imperfect as it is misguided. […]
Heights
Heights Written by Paula Einöder. Translated by Lucy Greaves. I cannot write without destroying a poem which is a tree a tree because it sucked all it could at the roots of a previous poem and left it petrified and skeletal The new poem however became strong and flowered I am here In this battle of […]
black september
By Paula Einöder. Translated by Lucy Greaves. 19th of September, 2009 in this black September of branches of curdled bunches of closed purple droplets of drowned wind in this black September of vines of exploding grapes of scarlet rain of muffled air in this black September of shoots of never tasted fruits of encapsulated water […]
Broken Poem
By Paula Einöder. Translated by Lucy Greaves. I pull pages from the river and when I say river I hear the birds crowding in the visceral branches to crumble finally in the dissolved sky No. I tear pages from the river I mean to say: I try to do what can’t be done Stop the […]
minimal
By Paula Einöder. Translated by Lucy Greaves. the situation is such that between the earth and the moon the space is minimal we fall at an imaginary velocity only the wind touches us we have fish trapped in our hair and insects devouring us silently I had already realised It’s time to get closer […]
My Version
Written by Paula Einöder. Translated by Lucy Greaves. 12th of September, 2009 The cage has become bird Alejandra Pizarnik trans. Cecilia Rossi the bird has become cage and I can’t lift my feet off the floor I’m anchored and unable to fly locked in this prison of wings I can’t rise up even a centimetre […]
bittersweet expectation
By Paula Einöder. Translated by Lucy Greaves. where this verse begins I see the crossroads knitted with the patience of Penelope that’s how I’ll wait for you I’ll tie up my dark steel needles leave my knitting anchored I won’t visit distant seas nor cut through meadows in flower that’s how I’ll wait for you […]
To Leave
By Lucía Lorenzo. Translated by Elsa Treviño Ramírez (They had turned her against a piece of greenish paper and they had turned her again against the same piece of greenish paper). It rained. She drank a cortado in a downtown bar. She waited. The rain drew a curtain on the ample picture windows. (They had […]
Cardinal
By Lucía Lorenzo. Translated by Elsa Treviño Ramírez. To spend the summer like that, for a girl, she believed, and even for an animal, was incomprehensible. It was not possible to do more than stand against the wall of shade, looking out at the open, and there faraway, remote, a cow, with its rumps, two shoulders upwards, […]
Women Like You
By Lucía Lorenzo. Translated by Elsa Treviño Ramírez A nurse asked her the given name. She said something, but less than a name. The nurse asked her where she lived. She drew a circle with one finger. The face, battered. She pointed it out. She showed it to the nurse as if it was a […]
Trivial Matters
By Leticia Feippe. Translated by Cherilyn Elston Ramiro made a face. He looked at us and turned over the card he had just read. He seemed to want to make sure that he knew the answer. “What item of clothing did the ancient Athenians use when they went to war?” he said, in a wise […]
The Inner Life of Walls
By Leticia Feippe. Translated by Cherilyn Elston. Every so often I ask myself why people kiss. I refer to the simple kiss, stereotypical, non-passionate, without any erotic intentions. I’m not an anthropologist and my laziness to investigate prevents me from providing a scientific answer, but if I had the patience required I’d like to explain […]
Playing the Victim
By Sofi Richero. Translated by Alex Thomas. To play the victim is to feel victimised / so say the good friends and family around the table and the great Uruguayan therapists / to play the victim is the verb / the most depraved refutation / the most heinous trap. Man already felt bad enough and […]