The Bilingual Poetry Series, Part I
On April 13, 2024, the doors between Spanish and English poetry opened wide…
Twenty-five poets at home in the Americas and Europe got together on Zoom, as part of the Bilingual Poetry Reading Series. The online stage was shared by the poets’ student translators.
Shepherding these students were their mentors, Marta López Luaces and Nuria Morgado. López and Morgado teach at Montclair State University and the City University of New York, respectively. The reading series is co-sponsored by the New York Public Library’s Jefferson Market branch, renowned as a center of literature.
Cable Street is honored to present the poems from this important reading in this pocket anthology. Here, in Part I, we will showcase poetry by the 14 poets at the event who write in Spanish and were translated into English. Part II, which will appear in our Fall issue, will showcase the 9 poets from the reading who write in English and were translated into Spanish. Here are the poets of Part I:
In aggregate, the poets have scores of books and hundreds of journal publications to their credit. But the series is about so much more than just kudos to the poets. It’s about the brilliant student translators from Montclair State and City University of New York,
These students are learning to be literary translators, to give works of art what Walter Banjamin called “an afterlife”—immortality in another tongue and another culture. López and Morgado—poets and translators themselves whose work has graced our journal here and here—teach by able example, conveying a love of language to their students.
Enjoy this beautiful collaboration of poets and their translators.
Photo by R. Cuyan, Guatemala.
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