Category Archives: Translation

Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center Translation

The 50th Anniversary of Eshleman’s Vallejo Translations

Friday, December 14, 2018

I recently sent George Drury Smith a Christmas card in which I mentioned how the celebration of Beyond Baroque’s 50 anniversary seemed to suspend the event in mid-flight. With the gala planned for November, the entire year slowed down so that the actual coming-of-age fluttered in a variation of Zeno’s Paradox. Now that the celebration is over, the significance of being a half-century old is finally sinking in, I told George, and all of us who were part of its growth are now able to focus on the next increment without the constant drone of nostalgic trumpets.

At the same time, we should take note of other anniversaries that have been neglected: Clayton Eshleman’s translation of Cesar Vallejo’s “Poemas Humanos” appeared 50 years, and it deserved a major celebration. Perhaps there was a conference somewhere in which a group of papers devoted themselves to the importance of Eshleman’s work as a translator of Vallejo, and if that is the case, I would be happy to take note of it in this blog. Somehow, though, I don’t hear anywhere near the buzz that should exist. His book had an impact on poetry in the 1970s that is hard to imagine any contemporary volume of poetry managing to achieve.

Eshleman continued to work on his translations of Vallejo’s poetry for several decades, and perhaps the subsequent volumes have superseded the original installation and obscured its clarion vitality. Any young poet who is just beginning to read outside of American poetry written in English needs to dig up the Grove Press volume, however, and spend some time pondering how this was the book that enabled many of the late 20th century poets she or he admires to break through the syntactical predictability of post-William Carlos Williams free verse.

Let’s hear a rowdy round of deeply appreciative applause for Mr. Clayton Eshleman.

Poetry Translation

Stefano Strazzabosco — Translations from “Bittersweet Kaleidoscope”

October 3, 2018

Stefano Strazzabosco, an Italian poet who lives in Mexico City, wrote a letter this past week while I was out of town to let me know that five of my poems, which he has translated into Italian, has now also been published in a literary magazine, L’IMMAGINAZIONE (307 — settembre-ottobre 2018). I wish to thank Stefano for his support of my writing, and especially for taking the time to write a note about my poetry to accompany his translations.

“Queste poesie danno conto del tono insieme colloquiale e alto del suo stile, che anche lessi- calmente ama mescolare la lingua quotidiana con termini che di tanto in tanto ne spezzano la fluidità, facendola impennare. Allo stesso modo, i dati della realtà concreta e quotidiana – un ami- co malato terminale, una colazione a base di avena, un interrogatorio, un gatto, etc. – vengo- no fatti lievitare fino a assumere un valore che trascende le occasioni senza rinnegarle, anzi: cercando al loro interno quel segno che le tra- sforma in esempi di un vissuto personale che di- viene esistenziale, paradigmatico, comune. Vengono così agitate anche le grandi questioni su cui ci interroghiamo: il senso del nostro esse- re nel mondo, la malattia, la morte, la scrittura al cospetto dell’ignoto, l’amicizia, l’amore. Non si tratta, però, di trasportare questi temi su un pia- no metafisico, quanto piuttosto di trovare al loro interno la cerniera che li fa ruotare su più piani, come prismi verbali. Chiaro che in questo modo, partendo dall’osservazione, arrivando fino a San Tommaso, più di qualcosa si perde per strada, e altro vi si aggiunge. Da qui la sottile ironia che avvolge questi prismi irregolari che affascinano per la loro concretezza, ma che durano per il lo- ro contenuto impalpabile.”

Bill Mohr è poeta, critico, saggista. Insegna alla California State University e vive a Long Beach con sua moglie Linda Fry.

(nota di Stefano Strazzabosco)

Books Poetry Readings Translation

The “Headwaters / Manantiales” Reading / Art Tour

WHAT BOOKS / GLASS TABLE COLLECTIVE
is proud to announce the publication of

The Headwaters of Nirvana / Los Manantiales del Nirvana:
Reassembled Poems

by Bill Mohr
(a bilingual edition translated by Jose Luis Rico and Robin Myers)

THE HEADWATERS OF NIRVANA / Los Manantiales del Nirvana is an expanded version of Pruebas Ocultas, a bilingual edition of Bill Mohr’s poems published in Mexico by Bonobos Editores. Both editions reflect the translators’ preferences; in selecting these poems, Jose Luis Rico and Robin Myers aspire to share their perspectives of a poet who is exceptionally difficult to classify. Touching on a multitude of tender as well as sardonic themes, Mohr’s poems are most often associated with a contumacious West Coast poetics centered in Los Angeles. While Mohr has vigorously championed his fellow poets since the early 1970s as an editor, publisher, critic, and literary historian, The Headwaters of Nirvana surpasses his other noteworthy achievements. Mohr now stands poised to claim an enduring place among the handful of American poets whose work will continue to be acknowledged on an international level. As Margarita Cuellar observed in selecting Pruebas Ocultas as one of the two dozen best books of poetry published in Mexico in 2015, “Si hay una palabra qui identifique sus textos esta podria ser ‘vitalidad’.”

The ”Headwaters / Manantiales” Tour

Long Beach Open Studio Tour
Painting by Linda Fry and Bill Mohr
Artist Co-Op Gallery, Studio #2
1330 Gladys Avenue
Long Beach, CA 90804
Saturday, October 20, Noon – 1:30 p.m.
Sunday, October 21; Noon – 2:30 p.m.

POETRY READING: New Unpublished Poems by Bill Mohr
El Segundo Public Library
Saturday, October 20 – 3 p.m.
(Reading with Elena Karina Byrne, Suzanne Lummis, and Gabriel Meyer)

Long Beach Open Studio Tour
Paintings by Linda Fry and Bill Mohr
Artist Co-Op Gallery, Studio #2
1330 Gladys Avenue
Long Beach, CA 90804
Saturday, October 27, Noon – 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, October 28; Noon – 5:00 p.m.

WHAT BOOKS FALL DEBUT READING
Book Launch: The Headwaters of Nirvana / Los Manantiales del Nirvana
Bill Mohr (also featuring poet Paul Lieber)
Skylight Book Store
1818 N. Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, CA
Sunday, October 21, 2018 – 5 p.m.

BEYOND BAROQUE — POETRY READING
The Headwaters of Nirvana / Los Manantiales del Nirvana
Bill Mohr (also featuring poet Paul Lieber)
681 Venice Blvd.
Venice, CA 90291
Saturday, October 27, 2018 – 8 p.m.

THE PAPA BACHALIA TABLE
Beyond Baroque
Gala 50th Anniversary Celebration
681 Venice Blvd.
Venice, CA 90291
Saturday, November 10, 2018 – 5 p.ml – 10 p.m.

Ventura Artists Union presents
Bill Mohr
Thursday Night Poetry Series
Hosted by Marsha de la O and Phil Taggart
EP Foster Library – Topping Room
651 E. Main Street
Ventura, CA 93001
Thursday, November 15, 2018; 7:30 p.m.

The Rapp Saloon Poetry Series
Hosted by Elena Secota
presents
Bill Mohr’s The Headwaters of Nirvana
1436 2nd Street
Santa Monica, CA 90401
(with Beth Rusico and Leon Martell)
Friday, November 16, 2018 – 8:30 p.m.

Books Translation

Reading at the Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard

Friday, March 23, 2018 — Late in the evening

I had to give my students their mid-term exams this past week at CSULB, so it’s been a busy time of helping them prepare, and then giving the exams, which had to be revised to account for my different approach to the subject matter of each course this semester. Over the past dozen years, I’ve taught each one several times (English 474/574: Survey of 20th Century American Literature; and two sections of English 386: Survey of Poetry), and enjoy the books I am using, but I am beginning to feel my age. I can no longer easily teach three courses in one day, so I teach my section of 474/574 and one section of 386 on Mondays and Wednesday; and the other section of 386 on Tuesday-Thursday. Of course, it’s not the teaching that wears one down, but disproportionate committee work.

I wish I had had more time this week to publicize my reading tomorrow in Oxnard at the Carnegie Art Museum. Marsha and Phil are very kind to ask me to read my poetry there, especially considering that I have no books of poems to sell. Of course, I no longer dream as I did when I was young about getting another book of poems out. My chance for recognition as a poet — at least in this country — grows smaller every day. While the Glass Table collective has plans to issue a book of mine this coming fall under the What Books imprint, I doubt that more than a half-dozen people will buy a copy. I gave a reading at Beyond Baroque several months ago. Two people showed up. I gave a reading at Gatsby Books in Long Beach around that same time; only a half-dozen folding chairs were needed to seat the audience.

Thinking of these experiences only makes me more grateful for how I have been welcomed as a poet in Mexico the three times I have gone there to read. My primary encouragement these days comes from thinking of the efforts of Bonobos Editores and my translators in Mexico. My poems have also been translated into Japanese, Croatian, and Italian, as well as Spanish. Maybe I need to find someone to translate my poems into English, since the verse I write in this country seems like a foreign language to my fellow citizens. It’s a small miracle that the writers who make up the Glass Table Collective have been able to disregard the indifference that my poetry is treated with in this country.

I have to admit that I am exhausted, and it is hard to summon the energy that will be needed to make the drive from Long Beach to Oxnard. Spring break starts today, but all that means is that my wife’s siblings and my siblings expect me to use this “free time” to help care for Linda’s mother and then to address my mother’s needs.

Take a deep breath, Bill. Let it out slowly. Take another deep breath. Let it out slowly.

Set the alarm clock. I must get up early to finish several tasks before I start the lone drive to Oxnard. I will have to be up there by mid-afternoon, since if I leave any later than 2:00 p.m., I am not likely to be on time for the reading, for which I am the opening act. Out-of-print poets are usually relegated to the “warm up the audience slot” for the featured poet. I did so for Mark Salerno and Ellyn Maybe at Beyond Baroque several years ago; and for Dale Herd more recently.

Take a deep breath, Bill. Let it out slowly. Take another deep breath. Let it out slowly.

Onward.

Saturday, March 24 – William Mohr and Vincent Mowrey
6:00 p.m.
Poetry at the Carnegie Art Museum
The Jackson Wheeler Series 2018

424 South C Street, Oxnard
Host: Marsha de la O

costs $5 / members free

Candidates for the set list:

“Why the Heart Never Develops Cancer” — from Bittersweet Kaleidoscope (IF/SF Editions, 2006; out of print)

“The Eviction” — from Milk Magazine

“The Headwaters of Nirvana” — from Caliban on-line magazine

“Scorpio in the Summer” — from hidden proofs (Bombshelter Press, 1982; out of print)

“On the Poetry of the Barbarians” — from Bittersweet Kaleidoscope (IF/SF Editions, 2006; out of print)

“Wrinkles” — from Bittersweet Kaleidoscope (IF/SF Editions, 2006; out of print)

“In the Ocean of Nothingness” — from Bittersweet Kaleidoscope (IF/SF Editions, 2006; out of print)

“Untitled” poem from Hummingbird magazine

“Scorpio in Transit” from the new anthology from KYSO

“Gravestone Song” (unpublished)

Ground Level Conditions Small Press Publishing Translation

The Exquisite Prolongation of Immediacy: The Translation of Life and Poetry by Paul Vangelisti

Sunday, September 24, 2017

This evening I will be at the Beyond Baroque Awards dinner, which is being held once again at the Church in Ocean Park (235 Hill Street, Santa Monica, CA 90406). I have been asked to make the presentation speech for the George Drury Smith Award, which will go to Paul Vangelisti this year. Prior winners include Eloise Klein Healy, Wanda Coleman, David St. John, Holly Prado, and myself.

For those who cannot attend, here is what I plan to say.

The Exquisite Prolongation of Immediacy: The Translation of Life and Poetry by Paul Vangelisti

In one of my blog posts about a year and a half ago, I cited John Holten to the effect that “a good form of torture for any serious writer would be to deny them reading anything other than works produced in their own language or country.” If anyone could be said to have led the resistance to monolingual tyranny in Los Angeles the past half-century, it would have to be Paul Vangelisti, whose devotion to the art of translation goes far beyond any mere literary metamorphosis. Indeed, his writing is nothing short of an inspiring reminder of the daily necessity of accounting for each day of this quirky journey, and of how that accounting demands nothing less than the imperative: “You must translate your life.”

In translating his life, Paul is the single most ambidextrous person I have ever encountered. His accomplishments are manifold, and while they are too numerous to sum up easily, Paul would be the first to delineate how much others have assisted him over the years. The virtues of collaboration are much like those of translation: audacity, candor, commitment; and Paul has enabled those with whom he has worked to strengthen those virtues in their own lives. If Paul has inspired so many people with whom he has collaborated, it is largely because simply to be in his presence distills and effaces one’s own uncertainties and self-doubts, and enables one to renew that personal covenant with the imagination that insists on having a immediate connection with social reality.

Notwithstanding the scope of his generative collaborations, it remains Paul who has been the cynosure of the effort to make Los Angeles a place worthy of being at least a provincial capital in the world republic of letters. If Pascale Casanova’s description of literary enfranchisement meant that a truly representative body of arbitration within the realm of the imagination could actually function, then there would be little doubt that the person we should elect as our senator should be Paul Vangelisti.

He has earned this stature with a multi-decade production of superb poetry, but with a personal masthead of magazines, books, and anthologies featuring the work of other poets, especially within the maverick avant-garde. Yet no matter how much he accomplishes, he remains rigorously engaged with the increment yet to come. I have recently talked with Paul about the need for an anthology that presents the canon of West Coast poets. Every anthology on my bookshelves at best includes a smattering of West Coast poets, and it is time for California, Oregon, and Washington, along with Baja California and Vancouver, Canada, to assert itself as an autonomous site of poetics. Paul’s reaction to my suggestion was an emphatic “Let’s do it,” but of course in certain ways he has already done it, for that anthology will largely draw on those who have appeared in the dozens of issues of magazines that he has edited or co-edited or published, magazines such Invisible City, New Review of Literature, Ribot, and OR, as well as on the books of poetry published by his subversive enterprises, Red Hill Press and Seismicity Editions. The anthologies he himself has worked on, beginning in the early 1970s, will be the kernel of this future volume’s vision.

I should mention that I am the stand-in tonight for the person who would traditionally give this awards speech, but last year’s award winner, Holly Prado cannot be here in person tonight, due to the unfortunate fire that recently scorched the apartment she shared with her husband, the poet and actor Harry Northup. I happy to report that their recovery from this incident is going well, in large part because we as a community came together in their support. When it became apparent Holly would not be able to make this event, I suggested Dennis Phillips be asked to have this honor of presenting the award to Paul, since Dennis after all served as President of Beyond Baroque in the mid-1980s and would be the perfect intermediary at this gathering. In taking on this assignment, I knew one thing from the start, and that was I was going to quote Dennis Phillips as a way of featuring their deep bond. I have one ready-made advantage in doing this, for Dennis was the driving force behind a book, Nausikaa’s Isle, that was published two years ago to honor Paul on his 70th birthday. In the preface to that book, Dennis observed that “As a poet, a translator, an editor, a publisher, an educator, and for all the right reasons, an administrator, Paul Vangelisti has created a force of gravity felt by his readers, several international generations of poets, and his students, that brings to mind the similar influence of Pound.” In completely agreeing with Dennis, I would especially note this important understanding of the nature of that “force of gravity”: it is the quintessential trialectic gift exchange of space and time that generates history with more than literary meaning. Indeed, it is, as Dennis observes, “how deeply integrated in his work – and I mean all his work – are the poetic and the political.”

All of this magnitude has not gone unrecognized. In addition to NEA grants for both his own poetry and to assist his translation projects – and it should be noted that very few poets are at a level of this double achievement — he has also received numerous awards for his translations, including Italy’s Flaiano Prize and the PEN USA Prize for Translation in 2006. In 2010, the Academy of American Poets gave the Raiziss/de Palchi Book Prize. Paul is most certainly not without honors, accolades and awards as a writer and a translator, but there have been too few occasions in Los Angeles for Paul to receive a full measure of our appreciation for his enormous contribution to our cultural maturation. We are about to mark the 50th anniversary of Beyond Baroque, and two years after that celebration, it would only be appropriate for Beyond Baroque to hold a celebration of a half-century of editorial and publishing endeavors by Paul Vangelisti that have enabled so many poets and writers to attain an international audience. In the meantime, however, let this award serve as an initial installation. Paul has frequently configured his experience in Los Angeles as one of exile, and while I do not wish to contravene that assessment, I hope that for one night – tonight – he can briefly imagine himself at home, as we award him the 2017 George Drury Smith Award. Please join me in welcoming Paul Vangelisti to the stage for the bestowal of this award.

Autobiography Books Ground Level Conditions MFA programs Small Press Publishing Translation

Magra Books: To Italy and Back

Chalkboard August Harmony
(Chalkboard near Fourth Street and Temple Avenue, Long Beach, CA)

August 27, 2017

Paul Vangelisti and John McBride were among the most productive editors and publishers of the golden age of small press publishing in the 1970s. The proliferation of MFA programs since 1980 has unfortunately all but erased recent literary history: how MFA program were barely worth mentioning to the majority of those committed to a life as a poet in the mid-1970s. The notion of a “career” as a poet back then was laughable. The production of books and magazines on an antinomian basis was quite serious, however; in fact, that’s all that mattered.

Vangelisti and McBride not only published dozens of books through their imprint, Red Hill Press, but also over two dozen issues of Invisible City, a magazine that deserves to have its entire print run issued in a single full-length volume. The magazine came out on newspaper-size sheets of paper, and although the paper stock is of very high quality, any scholar having to work with two or ore issues at the same time can find the process of notating comparisons a bit cumbersome. It’s a project that a university press (such as the University of California press) should undertake at some point, although it may unfortunately have to wait until the copyright to the poems expires. Fortunately, on the whole, the poems that appeared in Invisible City are exceptional examples of writing that will still hold up in another half-century.

As well as being a prolific and internationally recognized poet, Vangelisti is an inveterate publisher. At Otis College of Art and Design, he founded Seismicity Editions, as well as a pair of magazines, New Review of Literature and OR magazine. He will be retiring from Otis at the end of this coming academic year, but he has already launched another publishing project. Magra Books is a chapbook project, printed in Italy, that will come out on a steady basis as a quartet of chapbooks. In any given increment, all four will have the same color stocks for their covers. The first quartet had a pale blue; the second, a quietly luscious orange that teased the shadows cast by a nearby embankment of red clay.

The poets featured in each set will be familiar to readers of Invisible City and OR magazines. You can find out more information about this project at the website for Magra Books: http://magrabooks.com.

FIRST QUARTET (January, 2017)
Martha Ronk — The Unfamiliar Familiar
Ray Di Palma — For a Curved Surface
Dennis Phillips — Desert Sequence
Marcus Valerius Martialis — Epigrams (translated, with an afterthought, by Art Beck)

Of this quarter, I would especially recommend Beck’s translations of Martial’s epigrams. Beck’s “afterthought” is hardly as casual as the word usually connotes; as an epistolary poem, it uses the cumulative tone of the translated epigrams as a surfer uses an ocean swell, and the resulting glide initiates us as honorary members of his extended family.

Many poets associated with Los Angeles don’t actually write that much about living here, but Martha Ronk embeds herself in this city with quiet candor and rueful compassion for everyone who must endure the casuistries of daily life here. In examining “loss, its flannelly familiarity,” Ronk explores some of the same insinuating wrinkles that bunch up around the domesticated ordinariness of the partially suburban. Her poems in this collection remind me of Dick Barnes’s collaborations with Judy Fiskin. Indeed, “The Unfamiliar Familiar” contains a sequence of poems about photographs of houses, so there might be an influence. In any case, “Twilight Tracks House #3” is one of those rare poems where the rhythm and the images left me hungry to absorb the poem entirely, which is to say that I longed to memorize this elegaic aubade to the keen pitch of having its syllables roll around in my consciousness like sated lovers about to be aroused again. Ronk’s chapbook concludes with poems I remember seeing recently published: a set of homages to Raymond Chandler’s classic novels about Los Angeles.

The late Ray Di Palma’s writing consistently contributed to the dialogue in Los Angeles and on the West Coast from the early 1970s onwards through his appearance in Vangelisti’s sequence of magazines, starting with Invisible City. This chapbook is a fine example of a collage call-and-response between the epigrammatic titles and sardonic clarification.

Dennis Phillips has been writing long poems for a half-century. Of all the poets I’ve ever met in Los Angeles, he is the one who most benefits from having his poems heard with as much duration as possible. As if to urge us to do so, the poems in Desert Sequence are assigned to a quintet of voices, the first of which acknowledges in a prose poem that this chapbook is part of a larger project, Mappa Mundi.
“Here. Hold this open for a long minute because we both know it’s about to go away.
If this is a map then all maps are maps of the world and any sentence is a narrative, but:”
In Phillips’s absorption of the desert’s map in the conjunctions that follow, we are given important cautionary reminders about the cartography of the imagination.

SECOND QUARTET (July, 2017)
Gillian ConoleyPreparing One’s Consciousness for the Avatar
Robert Crosson — The Price of Lemons: Or; Some of the Worst Movies Ever Made
Corrado Costa — The Dodo or The School for Night
Paul Vangelisti and William Xerra — Toodle-oo

I have to confess that I’ve always had some hesitations about Conoley’s poems. While moments in her poems have usually caught my attention, some aspect of her associative logic would inevitably throw me off course. Perhaps, finally, I am beginning to acclimate myself to her distinctive cadences. Oddly enough, it isn’t the title poem of her chapbook that delivers this entryway, but rather “Life on Earth” and “The Right to Be Forgotten.” If I were putting together an anthology of outstanding recent poems, this pair would easily make my short list.

Robert Crosson’s memoir of his life as a young aspiring actor and modest success is one of the most charming and candidly droll accounts of being an artistic ephebe in the early 1950s. It’s the perfect counter-balance to read, after watching your favorite film noir.

Corrado Costa’s Th Dodoreminds me of Ionesco’s early plays, and in all the right ways.

One of the most remarkable qualities of Toodle-oo‘s meditative lyricism (or should I say “its lyrical meditation”) is that it refuses to make the least effort to seduce the reader. To no avail, for I could not help but succumb to the primary gravitational force of the poem: the candor of the immediate. In identifying that factor, it’s crucial not to confuse “the immediate” with “spontaneity” — that trompe l’oeil of mid-century avant-garde nostalgia for some Dionysian avatar. This poem follows much more subtle, actual scents, and as I read, I breathed deeply, slowly, releasing the agitation of my ordinary day.

Books Translation

Five Poems by Bill Mohr in Italian

Ant Mound - Sixth Street

Saturday, August 26, 2017

One of the poets I met in Mexico City during my trips there to read my poetry was Stefano Strazzabosco, with whom I exchanged copies of books of poetry. His volume was a book-length poem focusing on ants, which I at first regarded as a self-contained trope, but now realize needs to be thought about as part of the emergence of poetry within ecological discourse. Strazzabosco’s imagination, however, wears a droll mask, and as far as I can tell, he views his role of a poet as one in which he sets an example of the effects of poetry in choosing how to live. If that encourages others to commit to the social work of healing ruptures on the planet, all the better, but nothing is enforced.

Strazzabosco has just written to let me know that he has translated several of my poems into Italian and had them published in a blog. Following on the recent translation of my poems into Croatian, I feel as if some kind of geographical destiny is at work, since Northern Italy and Croatia sketch a kind of northern crescent to the Adriatic Sea.

You can find his translations of my poems at:

https://librobreve.blogspot.it/2017/08/poesie-di-bill-mohr-nella-traduzione-di.html

Thank you, Stefano.

MFA programs Poetry Small Press Publishing Translation

Robin Myers, Poet-Translator: CONFLATIONS/Almagama

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Robin Myers, Poet-Translator: CONFLATIONS/Almagam

“Si tengo con qué escribir, sé que voy a detenerme a poner atención, a buscar entender cómo las cosas que me rodean se hablan entre sí.” — Robin Myers

Undergraduate students in creative writing often ask me about attending a MFA program. Since I myself do not have a MFA and often find myself in opposition to the constricted poetics that has dominated the Association of Writing Programs the past half-century, I am hardly the best person to go to for advice. I certainly encourage students to get the training that they feel is most appropriate for their talents and career goals. It’s important, for instance, for students to realize that the MFA is essentially a union card. It entitles one to apprenticeship status in the “brain factory,” which is to say that a person with a MFA can get teaching work at a college. Many MFA students who have attended CSULB have gone on to teach in the region’s community colleges, and a few have even taught at the four-year schools. Not only do they teach, but they continue writing, and several have gone on to publish novels and a fair amount of poetry. The success of the students is not surprising, given the quality of the MFA faculty. The other three poets who teach in the MFA program at CSULB (in seniority order, Charles Harper Webb, Patty Seyburn, and David Hernandez) all have national reputations; the fiction faculty includes two writers who have won N.E.A. creative writing fellowships. A student would be very hard pressed to find a better creative writing faculty at a public college, or many private colleges for that matter.

Any there other options, though? While it does require both aptitude and courage, one option is to empower oneself with thorough knowledge of a second language and to work as a translator. One young American poet who has done that is Robin Myers, who lives and works in Mexico City. She does not have a M.F.A., but she has developed something far more beneficial in the past several years; she has found a community of poets in Mexico whose commitment and knowledge of the art of poetry have enabled her to grow as a poet. Ultimately, one of the weaknesses of MFA programs in general is that they create networks and not communities. In undertaking this alternative course of maturing as a writer, Robin Myers has made herself part of a community which her affirmation of, in turn, has embraced her creative work.

Myers has just had her first book of poems, CONFLATIONS/Almagam, published in a bilingual edition in Mexico. I had the privilege of reading many of the poems in this book two years ago when the manuscript was still being finalized, and this collection deserves to be recognized as a superb debut by a poet who has just turned 30 years old. While this book might be difficult to obtain in the United States, you can find an interview with her that was published yesterday in the Los Angeles Review of Books:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-sudden-taking-in-of-air-an-interview-with-poet-and-translator-robin-myers/

Her interviewer, Daniel Saldaña París, is an essayist, poet and novelist. Among Strange Victims was just published this month by Coffee House Press; it is his first novel to appear in the United States.

Here is the catalogue copy for Robin Myers’s book:

http://www.edicionesantilope.com
Amalgama / Conflations
Robin Myers
Amalgama, la palabra, está definida en el diccionario como la unión o mezcla de cosas de naturaleza contraria o distinta. Y eso es justamente Amalgama, el libro: un inventario que Robin Myers levanta para luego recordar no sólo las cosas en sí, sino la sensación de asombro al encontrarlas todas juntas. Con una sensibilidad poco común, la poeta observa el mundo y va recogiendo lo que encuentra para darle después un lugar a través del lenguaje. “Si tengo con qué escribir”, dice Myers, “sé que voy a detenerme a poner atención, a buscar entender cómo las cosas que me rodean se hablan entre sí”.

Autobiography Poetry Translation

Bells and Pomegranates — Poems in Croatian

In the Fall, 2003, Paul Vangelisti invited me to co-teach a graduate seminar at Otis College of Art and Design in a rotation that would also include Norman Klein and himself. I was in the final year of finishing my dissertation, and was a bit nervous about taking on a graduate school assignment at such an early stage in my academic career, but Paul – ever the elder brother – reassured me that it would go well, and indeed it did. Eventually I would return to Otis later in that decade to teach another graduate seminar, but all on my own.

For the first, co-taught seminar, I drove up from San Diego to Otis every third week and met with a large group of students, which included an intriguing pair of writers from Croatia, Natalija Grgorinić and Ognjen Rađen. They were already at that point committed to writing as a single person, and they were among the best students – if not the very best – in that seminar. I subsequently heard from Paul that they moved to the Midwest after finishing Otis and attended Case Western University, but lost track of them until recently, when I received an e-mail inviting me to visit their arts residency program in Croatia and to send them some poems for a magazine they were starting with a writer and translator from Canada, Daniel Allan Cox. The magazine is called Zvona I Nari (Bells and Pomegranates). I sent them several new poems, and they are now posted in a bi-lingual format at: https://www.zvonainari.hr/single-post/2017/04/26/Stepping-Aside-Bill-Mohr

It is an honor and a pleasure to have Natalija and Ognjen convey my poems into their language, and Linda and I hope to visit Croatia this year and have a chance to hear them read these translations out loud, as well as to catch up with what they are working on as a writer “themself.”

Books Poetry Small Press Publishing Translation

UNAM Poetry Workshop; FILU in Xalapa

Sunday, April 30, 2017

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I received an invitation from Magali Velasco to read at the FILU book fair in Xalapa, Mexico several months ago, but she received a post-doc fellowship and turned over the planning to others. Fortunately, continuity in planning was maintained and thanks to the efforts of Eliza Rodriguez Castillo and many others, I was able to travel to Xalapa this past week and read my poetry on a panel with Rachel Lewitsky, as well as attend panels on translation featuring David Shook and Forrest Gander. On Thursday, David did a superb job of translating for Rachel and me as three different TV stations and newspapers conducted almost non-stop interviews.

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Rachel Levitsky and David Shook (with genius loci) in Xalapa

My first stop on Wednesday, April 26, though, was Mexico City, where I taught a three-hour poetry workshop to a large group of students at a campus of UNAM. I was very impressed with the quality of their writing and hope I get a chance to work with them again. I wish to thank Professor Aurora Piñeiro, Elizabeth Andión, and Amber Aura for organizing and coordinating this gathering.

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(left to right: Ana Laura Araujo, Bill Mohr, Daniela Zárate, Emilia Alcalá)

After the workshop, I had a bite to eat in mid-afternoon and then reconnoitered with David Shook and Rachel Lewitsky to make a four-hour trip to Xalapa. Rachel and I read together the next afternoon, and David read on Friday. I have rarely enjoyed the company of two poets as much as I did theirs this past week. It was one of the special accompaniments of the past dozen years. Our only regret was that Anthony Seidman, who was also one of the original poets invited to FILU, was unable to make the trip due to circumstances beyond his control. However, both David and I were pleased to be standing near a book fair booth when we heard a voice intone the name Forrest Gander in a microphone and we turned around towards a stage in a corner of the convention hall. Indeed, Forrest was sitting at a table on a stage, but it turned out that his name was being sounded out in appreciation by the moderator. We had arrived too late for that panel, but he did speak again the next day, and I was pleased to catch that presentation. All in all, it was one of the more gratifying weeks I have ever spent as a poet and teacher.

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Laura Emilia Pacheco and Forrest Gander (after their panel on translation, Friday, April 28)