Reynaldo Jimenez in Oaxaca, 2007 (Photo: Gabriela Giusti)

To conclude our collaborative series with Palabras Errantes, the Indy profiles the celebrated poet and cultural commentator, Reynaldo Jiménez.

Jiménez was born in Peru in 1959 but has lived in Buenos Aires since 1963. A prolific writer, he has 19 of his own books published, the majority of which are collections of poetry. His work has been included in numerous poetry books and he has been involved in compiling dozens of anthologies. He is deeply involved in the Buenos Aires cultural scene.

He participates in events and festivals across Latin America. He has embraced new media and technology, with a regularly updated blog, facebook page, and youtube channel (oroqolla2) with news, work and interviews from his literary world.

Do you consider yourself an Argentine poet?

I was born in Peru but I don’t consider myself a poet from any place in particular. Before finding out about ‘neologism’ – called such by Deleuze then repeated by many after him – I felt it in my own flesh: deterritorialised. The roots are there however, I can feel them, they move.

Reynaldo Jimenez in Oaxaca, 2007 (Photo: Gabriela Giusti)

How would you describe your poetic style? 

I believe that precision in poetry sometimes needs indirect paths. When a summary tries to explain poetic ideas, it lays them out as something confirmative and self-publicising not as part of the poetic experience which tends to come from the unknown. The concept of a ‘style’ to me seems to restrict the adventure, it’s better to let yourself go with the words and see what happens. They can certainly surprise us. Each type of text asks questions of the form it is written in. I write in search of the impersonal, the latent and the unknown. If I had to appeal to an adjective, I would use: protean.

Are there subjects which come up frequently in your work? 

I don’t deal with subjects. I try to distance myself as far as possible from the school of thought “composition, subject: the cow”, by which I mean I distance myself from the scholarly. I don’t believe in working within the strict boundaries of definitions like realists do. I look for the experiential word; the word which creates itself, that doesn’t rely upon previous realities. Language and reality like an astonished meeting, not in a pre-existing conformity.

How do you feel about poetry translation?

I also translate poems (from Portuguese) – each writer poses his own particular challenges. In the case of transposing my writing to a language which isn’t Spanish, like in English at the moment, it strikes me as very difficult because I work so much with etymological roots; in reality it is something instinctive but it always refers to a particular language. The determined reading planes I lay out in the poems get lost, so in that case, the ideal [for the translation] is a poet who is able to create a sound-associated texture in the second language.

reverse (from sangrado)

Written by Reynaldo Jiménez. Translated by Geoffrey Maguire.

Con los campos en movimiento creamos en el corazón de la materia
Miguel Ángel Bustos

WILL THIS WATERMARK BE THE LOUD
ness that bewilders? on the page-soul
swift palms scatter, releasing fertile lions,
their breath lethal, just to remain on the
savannah: there, further, it cannot be found…

like disturbing low hunger in its lair
among layers that shade does not sharpen
but into the air, bliss surmounts bareback
& like the palm surrenders: drifted delta
between alluvial eyelids spouts, hushes.

will patina be the grace, quartz that hurls
resemblances by hungers-light
for mother Uma, lifted in arms
within the spy space just as water lilies
orbit the mud?

will this eating and fasting be the sphere, spirals
& sweat of each gram-age waiting
just to rage froth that the thorn kept?
separated petals radiate multiparous
wakefulness, & in the respite i restore.

*eating and fasting: Miguel Ángel Bustos

WITHIN HIS FEMALE HE THREADS
—the day burns from gem to yolk
with no command— then the cold
tongue is caught, transbeats

a star the lapse-pool of breath,
the twisting letters consume
more pages, around the time
that slows her passionflower fall.

watching everything does not seep.
does not make hunger nor appease
knowing, or almost an elk in turmoil:
keys brush in the forest, there in the forest

is no respite nor even a spire seems to grow,
unison between altars, brambles, the rose
whose spinal tropism the breath of minute
the shores of sleep pollinates. & shows

the gloomy firefly of hunger &
a flower is conceived in the head,
into the air it turns its petals,
emulsion where sighs find rest,

being every shield it shows lucidity.
arouses the scents of space,
or rather this not-usual instant:
it mistakes voices & sprinkles

its abyssal brush, from well-
polished stone —did you hear,
behind the hidden door,
a single dandelion?— or

awake & with no more steps.
i can see, asleep, how
the shy blossom shows.

AS IF OUTSIDE TO BE LIGHTER
neither night nor dawn, behind
a curtain of birds the brief
phrase from Pan’s flute, while
passing, over there, memory
of what is not yet here.

made to the grace of sound,
jumble of swallowed verbs, the ear
whose reflection allows an orator:
nothing comes through now, woods
creak, no one leaves again.

in its weight the logical inversion,
the ear uproots sculptures
but as a river, denied by other
fiery voices, in its old inebriation,
asleep knowing, to be awake,
unsure to stay up.

impassive reflection, by remote
memento, the golden sound: the ash
tree like the light in which it bathes,
thirst turns us.

the wave of this phrase is veiled,
kiskadee in day’s womb, body
occupied by no one.

*

Photo courtesy of Laura Petrecca

For the third in our collaborative series with Palabras Errantes, the Indy profiles young Argentine poet Laura Petrecca.

Laura was born in Buenos Aires in 1985 and grew up in the neighbourhood of Retiro. She started to write seriously while she was studying cinema and published her first collection of poetry, ‘Pensó que ya lo sabía’ in 2008.

Two years later she published her second book, ‘Los Barcos vuelven’, and has continued to contribute poetry and prose for magazines in Mexico and France. She currently lives in Paris.

How did you begin your career as a writer?

I started to write while I was studying cinema in Buenos Aires. I suppose more than anything I felt fortunate that–  compared to working in film studios – I was able to make something autonomously, without money, people or long term plans.

Writing has a kind of instantaneous pleasure – like painting or photography – because it’s something that can be produced quickly. Gradually, writing became my main interest and it still is.

As with most of the things I really want to do, there’s never much forward thinking or planning; the desire and the action take place at the same time and just work themselves out – I couldn’t imagine it being any other way. For the time being, I know that writing is probably what I like doing the most but I try not to speculate too much, I simply try to do.

Photo courtesy of Laura Petrecca

Are there any subjects that reappear often in your work?

I think rather than there being recurring themes, there are spaces, images and atmospheres that reappear in what I write. I’m aware of this and sometimes I do write the same thing but in different ways – with different versions and in different times. I recognise there is something specific I am looking for.

I think that’s the only way I can describe it, because I never start writing knowing that I’m going to write about this or that. I don’t have a plan, I find my way as I go along. That’s the thing I like most about certain types of poetry; when I work on short, condensed texts, an overriding theme emerges in the collection when they’re put together – the unity appears in the book rather than the individual poem.

How did you find the translation process? 

The translation process was very rewarding for me. I was lucky enough to meet my translator, Cherie Elston, on a trip, and from then on we kept in touch by email.

What surprised me, and what I found most exciting, was that in her translation there was a type of rewriting that came about through interpretation and a deep understanding of the material. The poems I sent off went through a new creative process and I think that’s the most stimulating aspect of translation- especially poetry translation. You have to go beyond a mere faithfulness to the original to get the content across; literal translation isn’t enough if you want to create the same effect in a second language. People say that something is lost in translation but I feel the opposite; that through good translation the text gains something, and for that I’m very grateful.

Below are three untitled poems by Laura Petrecca, with translation by Cherie Elston

The black burns
extinguish within

ignited with milk
by the sound of the race

what are these faces tattooed with threads
but all those years in a foreign city?

where cold rusts
like sulphur on bridges,
like a girl turning
like that which you seek,

lost in the open strokes of possibility
saving with apples the perforations in the raft

the water below, waits above
and the dam rises in a submarine elevator

and is this your doubt, the same that goes down?

—-

I see the star revolve
retreat above the mute roofs

it does not exist as doubt does not exist
when the celestial mattress ties me

and I believe I see but above all I want
to know the nerve fertilizing the legs
imagine the dexterity of the virgin’s flight

to think that I above him opening me
in plastic bottles
still preserve a masculine offering
which is what makes him feel close to me

and he says it, occasionally,
I listen to him as he listens to me
beneath the perfect ending

—-

Facing the dog’s mouth
the sound is always the same

the same voice, the song that falters

like when you slept,
squashed against glass,
crowned with bees in a private plan

like he who smiles in the floor that opens up
who knows something more
because he defends the arms that fall

and smiling, therefore
is inevitable

as it is also inevitable
not to dream during war

and embracing the stomach of a panther
knowing,

curling yourself around her
bound to the warmth of the fur

where yes your father lived

Photo courtesy of Gabriel Cortinas

In collaboration with Palabras Errantes we continue our four part series of poet profiles with Gabriel Cortiñas.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1983, he currently works as a poet and a literature teacher in primary and secondary schools.

His first book of poetry, ‘Brazadas’, was published in 2007. His second, ‘Hospital de Campaña’, won last year’s international Margarita Hierro poetry prize in Spain.

As well as writing poetry reviews and interviews for various websites he also co-runs the online magazine ‘La Literatura del Pobre’ - a website that encourages poetry exchange between Spain and Argentina.

Have you always wanted to be a writer?

When I was little I didn’t want to be – not that I consider myself a ‘writer’ these days either – but I didn’t dream about being one; I wanted to be a football player like any young boy.

I started writing, more or less, when I was secondary school – I used to write prose, poetry and songs. There wasn’t a moment of revelation when I said to myself, “I want to be a poet” or anything like that.

When you write you feel as if you have got something to say – whether it is valid or not – but you should stop writing when you think you’ve got nothing to say. Right now I do have plenty to say but who knows how it will be in ten years time?

How would you describe your poetic style?

It’s difficult, because I find that when a writer wants to define his aesthetic, either consciously or unconsciously, he ends up putting his foot in it. What I would say is that I don’t write narrative poetry. There is a narrative in what I write, but it’s a hybrid narrative and it plays with broken syntax.

Someone once told me that there are two types of poetry: poetry you read under your breath and poetry you read out loud. I don’t know if I manage it but I try to write poetry that can be read out loud. By this I don’t mean poems that can be read at recitals, I mean poetry that has to do with the outside world, everything that takes place around you,  and the sound of the spoken word. My poetry isn’t all about the ‘me’ and self-reflection, it draws more from the public domain.

I don’t know if I would define it as urban, but everyone writes about what goes on in their lives. What I write about is connected to what goes on in my life, and it is lodged in a certain place and time. I live in a city, I go to work everyday, I travel by bus and that all obviously feeds what I write.

How did you find the process of having your poems translated?

There was a lot of dialogue between me and Chris Schafenacker because the translator’s job isn’t easy.

When you have a narrative poem that tells a story in verse – it might be difficult to capture the sounds and everything but translation is possible. But when you’ve got poetry that breaks the syntax up and jumbles the words around, it gets tricky. That sort of poem requires a translator who is really dedicated to the work.

There was one sentence that was particularly difficult to translate because it played with a local saying. And I told Chris: “Look, what I was trying to say was this, and I did in such a such a way but this is also a specific saying.” And one way or another, he had to find another saying in English that means something similar and incorporate it. At that point it’s not so much a translation as an interpretation – and it was amazing what he did – he had to rewrite it really.

It can be strange reading yourself in another language though, especially when you don’t understand some of the words!

Extract from ‘Hospital de Campaña’

Translation by Chris Schafenacker, courtesy of Palabras Errantes

You can’t make flour out of helmets

they roasted the enemy but ate him raw

his gold tooth burst in their belly

patiently, they ground teeth, picked at them

made tortillas: out of corn, out of rice

tortillas made of potatoes, made of molars.

The tooth’s shine threatens to tear loose

light doesn’t digest in the belly

a sliver that splits the eardrum in four.

If the vanguard doesn’t cover you: the buzz

the explosion. Everyone in their seats

awaiting the start of the fight.

He closes upon the mat like a budding flower

(budding flowers don’t explode)

it is forbidden to wear a watch.

When his father fell in the jungle

he passed on his watch before dying.

He now caresses it under his pillow

will melt it for copper in a pawn shop

his old lady will forgive him

that time no longer exists.

There were still puddles in the street

he opened a window and tossed out something eternal

to be named after the fall,

car, salary, sidewalk: Justice

the third crossbreed dream, crossbreed harmony

—interpret—

—interpret—

the leaves scattered by the after class struggle.

A small mud statue on his bedside table

that he spits on every night

little idol deforms, mutates, day after day

brought it from Tucumán

dressed it as a soldier, prays to it, spits on it

every night:

muddied must red wine saliva

caked on.

Olguín prays to a dead father drowned in saliva

anoints him with a loogie

hawks up seeds, germinated must

wine flowers grow on his face

constantly deformed by water, saliva

prays to him ever night

a thick loogie

myth let loose in formless mud

once seen surrounded by corn, his face

never stopped laughing.

On a mountain

full of carbon full

of oil wells

the Scotsman won’t surrender, continues shooting

like a maniac on high

continues shooting: blistering chickenpox

doesn’t know that his bullets carry an implicit pact

spoken pact inside each bullet

in disbandment retreat one must wait

while the scorched tree grows

the tree bearing fruit wrapped in the pink skin

of the frenulum.

A cows tongue rotting in the sun

is all that’s left to eat

the flies

pick the tongue apart, in the jungle

salt gets at everything: pork jerky

bull jerky, duck jerky, no

ducks are always swimming

in pots of boiling water

duck, parrot, canary, hen

the broth is a blood pact boiling

that chills the corn, the beans, the teeth

salt gets at everything, a cows

tongue rotting in sun

the flies are a part of the deal.

As part of the Indy’s month-long celebration of Argentine literature, we look at the work of Palabras Errantes- a literary translation project that is currently working with previously untranslated Argentine poets.

Cherie Elston, coordinator of Palabras Errantes

The project aims to provide a glimpse into the cutting edge world of contemporary Argentine poetry, while encouraging debate about the merits and challenges of translation.

Working with Palabras Errantes in a collaborative series, the Indy will be bringing you four profiles and four translations over the next four weeks.

Cherie Elston, coordinator of Palabras Errantes, spoke to the Indy about where the idea came from.

The project shares a website with Pulsamerica, an organisation providing weekly updates on Latin American news in English. Cherie explains that both the news site and the literary project emerged from the same desire to get more Latin American content into English language media.

“When Ben (the editor of Pulsamerica) was in Argentina last year, he thought there was so much going on – so much content that will never reach an English language audience,” she says. “We wanted to find a variety of aesthetic styles that otherwise wouldn’t get translated into English.”

The idea is to give an English-speaking audience the opportunity to learn about the depth and complexity of Latin American literature by translating the work of a diverse selection of writers from across the continent.

This goal extends to include writers who might be overlooked by the bigger publishing houses: “I find it frustrating when you look at the same old stuff produced by the major publishers and they perpetuate stereotypes on certain discourses on Latin America,” says Cherie. “It would be interesting to look at different texts being produced and not just texts that look at violence, for example.”

Last year, Palabras Errantes translated the work of female Uruguayan writers and presented the work.

Argentina is the second country Palabras Errantes has worked with. Last year the project translated the work of female Uruguayan writers, which is now being turned into an e-book for free download. This year they turned their attention to Argentine poetry.

The process seems simple: Cherie searches out interesting writers from around the country, engages in a dialogue with them and, with the help of professional volunteers, translates their work and publishes it on Palabras Errantes’ website.

“The problem with the Argentine project was that there are too many poets!” she explains. Unlike the previous project, which involved selecting writers from a relatively small pool, this time around they had to deal with an abundance of poets on the Argentine scene. “There’s an awful lot going on with poetry in Argentina,” she adds.

The network of writers she works with has grown, and continues to grow, through word of mouth. Faced with the challenge of penetrating literary circles from across the Atlantic, Cherie relies on recommendations from the few contacts she started with in order to cast the net as wide as possible.

“Every time I contact a writer I ask them to recommend other writers,” she says. And inevitably some people recommend friends or acquaintances but eventually, as more and more people get involved, the network grows and enough writers of merit emerge.

Palabras Errantes logo

“This project isn’t defining the Argentine scene,” she stresses, “it’s simply showcasing some of the writers who are working there. What I wanted to do was show the variety of styles coming out of contemporary Argentine poetry.”

Since the project is one of translation, finding the writers is only the first step- translating the work comes next – and translating poetry is no mean feat. It involves getting to the core of what language really is. When you write a poem, you use words as imprecise building blocks – you paint a picture, convey an idea and provoke an emotional response.

When you translate a poem, it’s not necessarily the words themselves that you have to capture, but the underlying image or idea. The translators need to have a strong understanding of the nuances of both languages, but they also need to be able to think and write like a poet in the English language first.

Cherie accepts that in translation there will always be a sacrifice but warns that in poetry the sacrifice is all the more evident. “If you are trying to capture a concept, an image, a metaphor, a rhythm and a rhyme, something will inevitably be lost. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing to be gained,” she says. The aim of projects like Palabras Errantes is to make the transition between one language and the other as seamless as possible.

The poets selected for translation by the Palabras Errantes project will be gradually published on their site over the coming weeks. We begin the ‘Palabras Errantes: Poet Profiles’ series with a profile of the poet Mercedes Araujo and an accompanying translation from her poem ‘The life of butterflies’.

Mercedes Araujo (Photo: Lillo Montalto Monella)

The first of our ‘Palabras Errantes: Poet Profiles‘ is Mercedes Araujo. Born in Mendoza in 1972, she spent time studying in Madrid and has now settled in Buenos Aires. She writes both poetry and prose in addition to her work as an environmental lawyer for the Argentine government.

She has published several collections of poetry including ‘Asperos esmeros’ in 2003, ‘Duelo’ in 2005, ‘Viajar sola’ in 2009 and, most recently, ‘La Isla’ in 2010. Her work was included in the anthology ‘Poetas Argentinas 1960 – 1980’ and her debut novel, ‘La hija de la Cabra’, was awarded last year’s Premio Nacional de las Artes and is due to be published later this year.

Have you always wanted to be a poet?

Since I was very little I was determined to become a writer, even if I didn’t really know what it meant to be one. More than anything I was a voracious reader and, starting from when I was eight, I just read everything. That link with books and fiction helped me live in an imaginary world of words and that’s something that marked me since I was very young.

How would you describe your poems to someone who doesn’t know them?

Pretty much everything I write has to do with nature. It has to do with a certain type of subjectivity – more often than not a feminine subjectivity – that is lodged in nature. I feel like this comes from my relationship with the land when I was a little girl, surrounded by mountains and deserts. Writing about nature you can construct a lot of metaphors about life, but obviously I have to be careful not to make it too simple.

I don’t write with very rigid or formal constraints in terms of the metric and the rhyme, but there are some lyrical elements to my work. When I use a word, I want all the facets of the word to resonate – and that’s the challenge really.

A poet’s work basically involves searching and reading, finding the right word and then fine tuning the work until it sounds as good as it can.

What are your thoughts on Palabras Errantes as a project and poetry translation in general?

I loved the project; the whole idea is very interesting to me. I was curious to see how people from another culture and who speak another language would react to the work, because most Latin American writers are circulated around the continent and in Spain, but rarely in Great Britain.

When you translate poetry, you almost have to rewrite it. When you translate prose there is a linear aspect that allows you to translate it in the same way it was written and with the same meaning. The difference is that, in poetry, the words can have a multitude of different meanings.

When I read my poems in English I noticed that the translator had played a lot with the words, he didn’t follow the linear narrative at all. Well, it was very interesting indeed.

Extract from ‘The life of butterflies’
Translation by Paul Merchant, courtesy of Palabras Errantes

In the hundred metamorphoses

I have seen you,

-captivate me-

or, in the sureness of that incredible physical feat

that is your voracious appetite

able to exterminate my garden

leaving no food, nutrients, spots of damp

however tiny, yet enough for those small

wild flowers to last the winter

lean, sallow, gaunt,

lying back waiting

saying with certainty as at the beginning

with insistent pulsing

why does all that make you sad

all that, now distant and blurred

if even after this war

back to your garden, with wounded feet,

will come the exultant body.

Meanwhile, any tiny thing will suit

for painting the thousand-coloured garland

whose beauty announces the sadness of life,

because only we – the bloodless animals-

confuse a bright, fresh glow

that the tide returns to us

with the breathing of two dragons.

You know the evils that separation leaves,

a maggot prey to the planets’ influence

faces a small sparrow:

the sparrow comes close and the maggot tied

to a stick gives itself up to the beak.

There is not even an outline

of repentance, or future.

Such confusion, these wings

prehistoric moth, scaly wings

were they born with the will

to ignore absence?

And if I say: I have no strength

even with the clumsiness they give me

When I walk through the street, will the sun

have abandoned me

or will it allow the movement

spun between landscape, body, spirit?

Like the moon moth -I thought-

you will be left without a mouth

and I without sustenance, colour, earth or air.

Newborn butterflies

have those pretty wings, folded up,

but they also fall though they pursue

beauty, and each transformation

a silk thread wraps them in

wears them down in the battle for eternity, for food,

leaves them there.

Like words which are fresh

promises, of snow water,

hidden in the arteries of a basalt hill

gulping oxygen to begin again

such is my offering

I shelter you in the crimson cloak

and then the gift

-you already know it-

the torch, the fire in your hands

pure courage for that mission of yours

to bring things to their subtle state.

First mystery: time,

waiting is my nature

as a ghost of weeds

nettles, thistles, dandelions I eat,

these three feet and the body

which seems an unbroken block

at dawn, because perhaps during sleep

or precisely during sleep,

at a whim it heals that wound

and sorrow

is sweetly and delicately relieved.

All can be delayed if you stop

and lock your two feet to a tree,

monsters, sad memories

a headless doll

in childhood horror and desire are twins.

The stars say your flight is detached,

you keep yourself for the shadier parts

of jungles, what is left of what you were,

you will go and I who pray to future springs

and ask feed me, enlighten me

nail that metal to my temple, to my memory

drain me

pin me to the chosen cloth

where those graces hang

here the tiny shadow of burning trees

here your mother’s stories, here small stones

with your name, or else offer those warlike birds

my wings with their grey ocelli

it would not be bad for this body to end

loaded in a confused bird’s beak

floating in Brazil’s rough sea

and in those waters would I be able

to take on the form of the tide?

Dreaming as a moth brings a sky

a thought of sky

where enormous blue

whales rise up

among majestic clouds

courage must be like this, in dreams.

It may be difficult to go on: there are reindeer, beasts,

and we are not the branch or the breeze that moves it

salt or water, sky, land and sea

in an autumn garden I pass my afternoons,

and I can say wind, lightning

or that today is pure fire, that your mother expelled you

from her belly to the world, I’ll celebrate.