Episode 61: Rosa Alcalá
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Episode 1 of Commonplace’s special series on translation
Rosa Alcalá is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, most recently, MyOTHER TONGUE (Futurepoem), and translator of several full-length translations including the recently released New and Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña (Kelsey Street Press) for which Alcalá received a translation fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts in 2015.
Alcalá talks to Commonplace host Rachel Zucker about the experience of translating and transcribing the poetry and performances of Chilean-born artist Cecilia Vicuña. Alcalá speaks about growing up in Paterson, N.J., having been a child interpreter and mediator for her Spanish-speaking parents, language shame, studying at Brown and meeting Vicuña for the first time, studying transcription and ethnopoetics with Dennis Tedlock at SUNY Buffalo, grappling with how to record ephemerality, inaudibility, temporality, volume, tone and the feeling of listening (and mishearing) when translating, transcribing, and editing Vicuña’s multi-lingual performances for the book Spit Temple. Alcalá describes her long friendship with Vicuña, accepting the invitation to edit and translate Vicuña’s New and Selected, retranslating earlier translations, how the work of translating others affects her own writing, poetry as a space to say what is impossible to say in any language, literary and linguistic heritage, her interest in the NY School poets (especially Frank O’Hara and Bernadette Mayer), raising a bilingual child, and her poem “Heritage Speaker” from MyOTHER TONGUE.
Books by Rosa Alcalá
MyOTHER TONGUE (Futurepoem, 2017)
A Third Instance, with Craig Watson and Elisabeth Whitehead (Instance Press, 2014)
The Lust of Unsentimental Waters (Shearsman Books, 2012)
Undocumentaries (Shearsman Books, 2010)
Translations by Rosa Alcalá
New and Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña (Kelsey Street Press, 2018)
Spit Temple: Selected Performances of Cecilia Vicuña (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012)
Bestiary by Lourdes Vazquez (Bilingual Press, 2004)
Guardians of the Secret by Lila Zemborain (Noemi Press)
Mauve Sea-Orchids by Lila Zemborain (translated w/ Mónica de la Torre, Belladonna*, 2007)
Books by Cecilia Vicuña not translated by Rosa Alcalá
About to Happen (Siglio, 2017)
Read Thread / The Story of the Red Thread (Sternberg Press, 2017)
Samborami (Chainlinks, 2011)
The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry (editor) (Oxford University Press, 2009)
Instan (Kelsey Street Press, 2002)
The Precarious / QUIPOem: The Art and Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña (Wesleyan Poetry Series, 1997)
Unraveling Words and Weaving Water (Graywolf, 1992)
Other Books and Writers Mentioned in the Episode
Édouard Glissant’s “Poetics of Relation” (University of Michigan Press, 1997)
*Other translators of New & Selected: Edwin Morgan, Eliot Weinberger, Christopher Leland, James O’Hern, Anne Twitty, Esther Allen, Suzanne Jill Levine, Urayoán Noel
Other Relevant Links
Original music for our translation series by composer and sound designer Nathaniel Wolkstein.
