Description
Poetry. Translated by Michael Martin Shea. Inspired by Ponce's long-standing practice of keeping a daily journal, DIARY is a twenty-part sequence that mixes the monotony of a long summer, the anxiety of creation, and a lush dream-scape of forests and vines. The poem meditates on what it means to remember, to wander, and to write while the shadow of the void, of an inevitable nothingness that hides in glances and small objects, lurks beneath the surface. "¿Qué es lo que recomienza?" Ponce asks—what is it that begins again? And where can you begin? DIARY introduces English-language readers to the work of one of Argentina's most singular writers.
Author Bio
Liliana Ponce (1950) is a poet and scholar of Japanese literature and writing. She holds a degree in literature from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and has published five books of poetry in Argentina: Trama continua (Corregidor, 1976), which was awarded Primer Premio del Fondo Nacional de las Artes; Composición (Ultimo Reino, 1984); Teoría de la voz y el sueño (tsé-tsé, 2001); Fudekara (tsé-tsé, 2008); and Paseante y huésped (Club Hem, 2016). Her most recent publications are the chapbook, Poiesis para reunir discursos partidos (Urania, 2019), as well as a volume of selected poems, Mi jardín salvaje (Univ. Eafit, 2020). Her poems, essays, and translations of Japanese poetry and drama have appeared widely in both Argentinian and international literary journals, and her work has been selected for inclusion in numerous anthologies, including Antología de la poesía argentina (Casa de las Américas, 1999), Poesía erótica argentina (Manantial, 2002), Antología de poetas argentinas 1940-1950 (Ediciones del Dock, 2006), and 200 años de poesía argentina (Alfaguara, 2010). In addition to her English translations, her work has been previously translated into French and was included in Voix d'Argentine (Le Temps des cerises, 2009).
Author City: BUENOS AIRES ARG
Michael Martin Shea is a poet, translator, editor, and literary critic. His translation of Liliana Ponce's DIARIO (DIARY) was published as a bilingual chapbook by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2018. Additional translations have appeared in Asymptote, Gulf Coast, New England Review, and Witness. He is the author of three chapbooks of poetry and hybrid writing, and his own work has appeared in Colorado Review, Conjunctions, Fence, jubilat, Pleiades, and elsewhere. A former Fulbright Fellow to Argentina, he currently lives in Philadelphia, PA, where he is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. He also serves as a Series Editor of the Best American Experimental Writing anthology series.
Author City: USA