Description
Poetry. Translated from the Spanish by Catherine Hammond. Longlisted for the 2017 National Translation Award. "We've been waiting so long, so expectantly for the poetry of Olvido García Valdés to appear in English translations that convey her signal importance to contemporary poetry in Spain and to international literature. She is one of the great ones. García Valdés taps a mode as essential as the Virgilian pastoral. She pressurizes and opens vents in the syntax, inciting eruptions in logic, emphasizing somatic connections between flesh and world. Characteristically, she braids underdetermined phrasal strands, agencies, points of view, and conceptual and emphatically sensual registers. While absence and negation are key themes in her work, the poems can be sharply funny and they come, against the darkness of our times, to assert a convincing spiritual buoyancy.
With an ear keenly tuned to García Valdés' complex music, translator Catherine Hammond often leads with the verb in English, tuning to the Spanish and keeping the agency of the verb open, recreating the stripped down and exigent quality of the original, a quality intensified by the Spanish poet's tendency to juxtapose fragments without subordinating one to the other. This is an important book. You'll know that as soon as you begin to read the poems."—Forrest Gander
Author Bio
Poet, essayist and translator, Olvido García Valdés was born on December 2, 1950 in Asturias, Spain. She holds degrees in Philosophy from the University of Valladolid and Romance Philology from the University of Oviedo. She resides in Toledo, Spain. Her poetry collections, except for her most recent Lo solo del animal (2012), have been published together in one volume, Esa polilla que delante de mí revolotea (Poesía reunida 1982-2008). She has translated into Spanish Pier Paolo Pasolini's poetry books, and in collaboration, a wide anthology of Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva. She is also author of the biographical essay, Teresa de Jesús, texts for art catalogs and numerous works of literary reflection. She was co-editor of the literary magazines, Los Infolios and El signo del gorrión. Her poetry has been translated into many languages. She has directed and coordinated several courses, seminars and cycles of contemporary poetry. She was part of the project, Estudios de Poética. Un lugar donde no se miente. Conversación con Olvido García Valdés, by Miguel Marinas, was published in 2014. Among other awards, in 2007 she was awarded the Premio Nacional de Poesía (National Poetry Prize) for her collection Y todos estábamos vivos (And We Were All Alive).
Author City: TOLEDO SPA
Catherine Hammond has a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University. Poems translated from Olvido García Vald és' collection AND WE WERE ALL ALIVE / Y TODOS ESTÁBAMOS VIVOS appear as a chapbook, House Surrounded by Scaffold, from Mid-American Review. Hammond translated Mexican poet, Carmen Boullosa, in a volume of selected poems which was a finalist in Drunken Boat's book contest. She has also published work from Venezuelan poet, María Auxiliadora Álvarez, and fiction writer, Ricardo Menéndez Salmón, from Spain. These translations appear in American Poetry Review, Words without Borders, Hayden's Ferry Review, Field, and many other national magazines. Hammond's own poetry has been anthologized in Fever Dreams: Contemporary Arizona Poetry from University of Arizona Press, in MARGIN: Exploring Modern Magical Realism, and in Yellow Silk from Warner Books. She has three Pushcart nominations. Hammond lives in Sun Lakes, Arizona, with her husband Troy Morrow.
Author City: CHANDLER, AZ USA