On Translating Rosabetty Muñoz’s “Children”

These four poems by Rosabetty Muñoz form part of her collection Hijos (Children) (El Kultrún Press, 1991), much like the islands after which each poem is titled form part of the Archipelago of Chiloé, in the southern waters of Chile. By this, I mean to say that the poems and the islands are connected in ways beyond their names, namely through the poet herself, who is a daughter of this singular place and culture.

Muñoz, who was born and raised in Chiloé, and has never wanted to live or practice her crafts—primarily poetry and education—elsewhere, is highly recognized as a major poet in Chile (as I write this, she has recently received another important award, the Premio Iberoamericano de Poesía Pablo Neruda). Among her most prominent qualities is a feminist voice that is utterly rooted in the geography and culture of her home. This was already evident in Hijos, one of her earlier works, published when she was a young mother of three, and in which the bodies of land and water that constitute the archipelago became a natural metaphor to bodies gestating, to navigating pregnancy and motherhood. Along the courses that nature sets, and alongside the sailor’s own desired destinations, navigation is full of hope and perils, insights and the unforeseen, wreckage and longing. Throughout forty-two poems, Muñoz weaves the channels, islands, and flashes of Chiloé’s distinct culture: vessels and coastline like bodily contours, compasses and stars as guides, threatening seas, threatened peace, and, always, immeasurable depths of love for the children in her sight.

Muñoz’s own language has been described as uncomplicated, often minimalist, with a quality that is at times almost prayer-like, all with which I agree. In my own view, having grown up partially in Chile, and having visited Chiloé on a few occasions, I feel that the culture each poem is immersed in and born from is a powerful entity and all-important context for entering her work. It deeply informs her voice and colors her subjects. It’s my hope that by reaching an English translation that mirrors the Spanish, this context envelops the reader of English as it does Chilean readers.