Posts featuring Álvaro Enrigue

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

The latest literary news from Mexico and Bulgaria!

This week, our Editors-at-Large take us to bi-national experimental poetry festivals and a community for children’s literature. From prize-winning novels to poetry that spans genres and mediums, read on to find out more!

Alan Mendoza Sosa, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Mexico

On Monday, January 15, Mexican poet Rocío Cerón launched the online series of panels “Diálogos Bifrontes” (Bifrontal Dialogues), alongside digital artist and poet Carlos Ramírez Kobra. Their conversation was the first of several upcoming chats about experimental, transmedial, and expanded poetry, a genre of literature that combines sounds, performance, and visual elements with poetic writing. They talked about how the transformation of poetry into different artistic and sonic registers entails a process of thinking, reflection, and attention that dissolves traditional boundaries between genre, media, and performance. They also reflected on their creative processes, highlighting how their works consist of — paraphrasing Cerón — an infinite codifying and re-codifying of language and symbols.

These Dialogues complement last year’s special, celebratory 13th anniversary edition of Enclave, an annual festival of expanded poetry founded by Cerón, which ran between November 23 and 25. As a bi-national event, Enclave 2023 was co-sponsored by several Mexican cultural institutions and the Goldsmiths University of London, and co-curated by Cerón and the German-British sound artist Iris Garrelfs. It invited collaborations between Mexican and British artists and poets exploring intersections between poetry, sound, music, and visual art.

Diálogos Bifrontes builds on Enclave’s mission of bringing together poets, artists, and musicians. Like the festival itself, the series will feature conversations by cutting-edge poets from Mexico and the U.K. who are redefining what poetry can mean. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

Literary news from New York, Vietnam, and Sweden!

This week, our editors from around the globe report on Spanish poetry readings in New York, new Vietnamese translations of classic Japanese novels, and the Gothenberg Book Fair in Sweden. Read on to find out more!

 Alan Mendoza Sosa, Editor-at-Large, reporting from New York

Though I usually report from Mexico City, I recently moved to New Haven to begin a PhD program at Yale. However, relocating has not prevented me from engaging with Hispanophone literary communities, particularly in New York City, a creative hub that connects people from all over the world, and where literary readings in Spanish are common.

The first event I attended was a multilingual poetry open mic at the Bowery Poetry Club in Manhattan. Hosted by Spanish poet Marcos de la Fuente, the soirée “Se Buscan Poetas / Poets Wanted” takes place every last Wednesday of the month. It brings together poets from New York and beyond, who sign up to share their work to the Bowery’s attentive audience. I went on Wednesday, August 31, and participated both as spectator and reader among other emerging Spanish- and English-speaking poets. The event opened with a performance by De la Fuente and actress Clara Francesca. They set the mood for the night with a dramatic interpretation of the bilingual poem “Solstice,” published in the anthology Poetryfighters (Ultramarina Editorial, 2022), assembled by De la Fuente himself. The reading was both exhilarating and engaging. Beyond simply voicing words from the book, De la Fuente and Francesca modulated their expressions and walked around the stage in synchrony with the content and rhythm of the text, creating moments of emotional and aural tension that excited the audience, more like a concert or play than a traditional poetry reading. In addition to hosting the monthly open mic, De la Fuente also directs the New York City part of the Kerouac Festival, an international poetry, music, and performance celebration that takes place in Vigo, New York, and Mexico City. Earlier this year, the festival featured the Chilean writer and Asymptote contributor Arelis Uribe.

READ MORE…

Jill Schoolman Honored at the Glamorous WWB Gala

Young people are being told that America comes first. I think we are here tonight because we believe otherwise and because we read otherwise.

The annual Words Without Borders gala celebrated the fifth anniversary of the Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature on November 1, named for the first chair of the board, Jim Ottaway. This year, the award honored Jill Schoolman, publisher of Archipelago Books. Archipelago has been a stalwart of the small but dedicated cohort of advocates for international literature in the U.S. since Jill founded the house in 2003—the same year Words Without Borders was created. In her humble, sincere acceptance speech, she told the room full of publishers, writers, translators, educators, and philanthropists, “I’ve felt a special kinship with WWB from the beginning. We created ourselves around the same time for many of the same reasons… Books that Archipelago publishes allow us to lose ourselves in other cultures and explore other worlds. It is our extraordinary translators who guide us through those worlds. We are extremely lucky to be working with such talented translators who are able to make books come alive for us, in both language and spirit. This wonderful award also belongs to them, too.”

READ MORE…