Episodes

005 – Translating with Rosa Alcalá

Rosa Alcalá tells us how to pick the right word.

[Want to read the transcript of this episode?]

We’re talking translation with Rosa Alcalá!! We’re featuring Alcalá’s performance and q&a from City of Asylum’s Literary Festival.

Rosa Alcalá is the author of three books of poetry: Undocumentaries (Shearsman Books, 2010), The Lust of Unsentimental Waters (Shearsman Books, 2011), and MyOTHER TONGUE (Futurepoem, 2017). Her poems have appeared in a number of anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2019; The Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them by Stephanie Burt (Harvard UP, 2016); American Poets in the 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement, edited by Claudia Rankine and Michael Dowdy (Wesleyan UP, 2018): and Angels of the Americlypse: New Latin@ Writing, edited by Carmen Giménez Smith and John Chávez (Counterpath, 2014).  Her work as a translator has focused on contemporary Latin American women poets living in the U.S. Most recently, she edited and co-translated Cecilia Vicuña: New & Selected Poems (Kelsey Street Press, 2018). She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, and a finalist for a PEN Translation Award. She is a Professor in the Bilingual MFA in Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas at El Paso, and she has given talks, readings, and workshops in both the U.S. and Latin America.

We’ll also get into what it’s like to be translated, how to figure out the right word, what we’re reading, and some thoughts for the road!

A quick summary of what to expect…

  • Intro/Welcome
  • Rosa Alcalá’s Bio
  • Episode Summary
  • from the ARCHIVE: Rosa Alcalá reads at City of Asylum on 5/15/21
  • An excerpt from an interview between Adriana and Alcalá (edited for length)
  • Karla and Adriana chat translation
  • What Are We Reading?
  • Remedios for the Road
  • Goodbye and outro

EPISODE LINKS

How To Listen

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Many thanks to Luis Alfonso for the music in this episode. Photo credit to City of Asylum.

Thanks for listening!

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