This Translation Tuesday, we present “Shipwreck” and “Landscape” by Colombian editor, music journalist, and one-time candy vendor Michael Benítez Ortiz. Writing the oh-so-ordinary at a tilt, Ortiz imbues the commonest of surroundings with a new, often despairing perspective. Translated with fidelity by Jackson Reed, the following works serve as an introduction to the idiosyncratic work of this emergent poet. Read on!
Shipwreck
The sky is the sea standing on its head
where my paper planes
drown.
Landscape
The night:
a mass grave of stars.
The rivers:
tears of pregnant women.
Tree branches:
dismembered children’s arms.
The rain:
condensed blood in the sky’s refrigerator.
The rainbow:
a broken parachute of dreams.
The wind:
thirst of the missing.
The mountains:
debris of war.
The man:
fear that germinates in the abyss of oblivion.
Translated from the Spanish by Jackson Reed.
Michael Benitez Ortiz was born in Bogotá in 1991 and grew up in Usme. When he was three years old he still didn’t know how to speak. At five he drank coffee for breakfast. When he was seven, he was left to run errands. At nine, he was the champion in a micro-soccer tournament, in the “pañales” category, with his team, Black Goblins. At eleven, there was no one in the neighborhood who could beat him in The King of Fighters ’99. When he was thirteen, he abandoned the arcade for billiards. At fifteen, he listened to Barón Rojo at full volume, and at seventeen he wrote his first book of poems which, fortunately, he never published.
Jackson Reed grew up in the rocky mountains of Utah and obtained his M.A. in English literature from Weber State University. He has lived and taught English in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Costa Rica. He currently lives in Paris where he translates poetry and is learning French at the Sorbonne.
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Read more from Translation Tuesdays on the Asymptote blog:
Translation Tuesday: [Not the Truth] by Riccardo Benzina
Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Hagiwara Sakutaro
Translation Tuesday: “Earth Mounds” by Ahmed Amran