ALTA Recommends Two Books of Poetry in Translation

ALTA (American Literary Translators Association) staff members Kelsi Vanada and Rachael Daum recommend new books of poetry in translation. Echo of the Park (Eulalia Books, 2019) by Romina Freschi, translated from the Spanish by Jeannine Marie Pitas; and Spawn (Book*hug Press, 2020) by Marie-Andrée Gill, translated from the French by Kristen Renee Miller, both get short reviews. From the latter:

This collection of poems is exquisite, exploring delicately and deeply the connection between person and place. Framed around the life cycle of the ouananiche, the non-migratory salmon, the narrator cycles through growing up, imperialism, 90s nostalgia, reclaiming colonized space within a colonizer’s language. The elegant and haunting translation into English by Miller deftly manages the translation into another imperialistic language by twisting English, bidding it balloon out and then contract, lifting up solemnity alongside absurdity. The movement within space stills, doubles, and expands explosively all at once like a thunderclap: “Only thunderstorms still tell it like it is.”

Read more about ALTA and these collections here.