Monday 21st October
6.30 to 9pm
Join us for the Launch of two new Poetry collections
I Sugar The Bones by Juana Adcock published by Out-Spoken Press
and
Translation of the Route by Laura Wittner, translated by Juana Adcock published by co-published by Bloodaxe Books and Poetry Translation Centre
At this special double book launch, as part of Laura Wittner’s UK tour, Juana Adcock will give an electrifying reading from her latest collection from Out-Spoken, followed by a dual-language reading from Laura Wittner with Juana reading her deft translations, rounded off by a Q&A. This is the only stop in London on Laura’s tour - so don’t miss out.
About I Sugar The Bones....
In her fourth collection, I Sugar the Bones, poet Juana Adcock interrogates, through the porosity of the US/Mexico border, Freudian slippages, and toxic relationships, what it means to cross from one country into another – the gradient spaces that inhabit the nexus between life and death, and the people and languages that sit either side of it.
Ghostly glitches, the role of rivers, and the character of Lisa Simpson as voiced for the Latin American market all empower I Sugar the Bones to stand as a polyvocal display; one where revelatory restlessness is underpinned by predicaments and realities which work to complicate the vistas of the interpersonal.
About Translation of the Route.....
May there be no ideas but in things
but I filled the things with ideas—
now they are so taut
they turn to dust
if I lightly touch them with a finger.
Translation of the Route is the eleventh collection by the award-winning Argentine poet and translator Laura Wittner. In poems that are precise, frank and finely tuned, Wittner explores the specificities of parental and familial love, life after marriage, and the reignition of the self in middle age.
The ‘things’ of life – bus journeys, potted plants, thunder at night, coffee-stained books, fleeting conversations and the rest – are made full through Wittner’s ability to pinpoint in them the consequential, and even the metaphysical, manipulating language with a translator’s delicate skill. There are funny, moving pen-portraits of Wittner’s two children, suddenly grown, as well as bell-clear descriptions of the task of writing. For this is also a collection about language itself – as an interface, as a surface, and as vital communication.
The poems in this edition, Wittner’s first collection available in English translation, have been translated by the Mexican-Scottish bilingual poet and translator Juana Adcock, acclaimed author of Manca and Split.
Juana Adcock is a Mexican poet, translator and editor based in Scotland. She is the author of Manca (Tierra Adentro, 2014), Vestigial (Stewed Rhubarb, 2022), and Split (Blue Diode, 2019), which was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was included in the Guardian’s Best Poetry of 2019. She is co-editor of the anthology of poetry by Latin American women Temporary Archives (Arc Publications, 2022), and her translation of the Mè’phàà poet Hubert Matiúwàa’s The Dogs Dreamt (Flipped Eye, forthcoming 2023) received a PEN Translates award. She has also translated Laura Wittner’s Translation of the Route (Poetry Translation Centre, forthcoming 2024) and Lola Ancira’s The Sadness of Shadows (MTO Press, forthcoming 2024).
Laura Wittner was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in December, 1967.
She has a bachelor degree in literature from the University of Buenos Aires and pursued postgraduate studies at New York University. She presently conducts poetry and translation workshops, and works as a translator for various publishing houses.
Her books of poetry include El pasillo del tren (1996), Los cosacos (1998), Las últimas mudanzas (2001), La tomadora de café (2005), Lluvias (2009), Balbuceos en una misma dirección (2011), La altura (2016), Lugares donde una no está (2017) and Traducción de la ruta (2020). In 2021 she published Se vive y se traduce, an autobiographical essay on translation, for which she was awarded a National Prize in 2023.
She also wrote and published more than twenty books for children, the latest of which are Dime cómo vuelas (2019), Mi tortugo (2019), the series Dinosauria and Miniaturas (2020), Justo antes de dormir (2021), Si mamá canta (2021), Animal Entendido (2022), Cual para tal (2022), ¿Y comieron perdices? (2023) and Se pide un deseo (2023).
She has translated books by Leonard Cohen, David Markson, M. John Harrison, Cynan Jones, Claire-Louise Bennett, Katherine Mansfield and James Schuyler, among many others.
Several of her poems have been translated into English, German, French and Portuguese and have been included in different anthologies from France, England, Spain and Brazil.
Her book Traducción de la ruta has been translated into Portuguese by Luciana Di Leone and Estela Rosa, and published in Brazil as Tradução da estrada. It is currently about to be published in English by the Poetry Translation Centre, translated by Juana Adcock.
Her book Se vive y se traduce has just been published in Brazil as Viver e traduzir by Bazar do Tempo, with an annotated translation by Paloma Vidal and María Cecilia Brandi.
Her book Justo antes de dormir has been translated into Italian and German and will be published in Korean next month. Her books Si mamá canta and Luna y la luna have been translated into English and published in the United States.
This event is presented by the Poetry Translation Centre, the only UK organisation dedicated to translating, publishing and promoting contemporary poetry from Africa, Asia and Latin America; and London-based independent publisher of poetry and critical writing, Out-Spoken Press. This year, the PTC celebrates its 20th birthday year with a series of events across the UK, supported by Arts Council England. Find out more about the PTC’s exciting events, publications, workshops and online activity at poetrytranslation.org.