Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Ilana Dann Luna (Pennsylvania, US 1978) is Associate professor of Latin American Studies and Spanish at Arizona State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with an emphasis in literary translation (2011). She is author of Adapting Gender: Mexican Feminisms from Literature to Film (SUNY Press, 2018) and is Co-Director of Programming for Femme Revolution Film Fest in Mexico City since its first edition. Luna is a singer, writer and translator of poetry and prose. Translated books include Juan José Rodinás’s Koan: Underwater (Cardboard House Press, 2018); Judith Santopietro’s Tiawanaku: Poems from the Madre Coqa (Orca Libro, 2019) – a 2020 Sarah Maguire Poetry in Translation Prize finalist; and Giancarlo Huapaya’s Sub Verse Workshop (Lavender Ink, 2020). She is currently translating Gaspar Orozco’s forthcoming Book of Mirages and Minaret.
To approach Gaspar Orozco’s poetry is to approach the light, infinite in its prismatic splitting, its constantly shifting elements come together anew, as in a kaleidoscope. Translating his work, thus, is to enter into this kaleidoscopic logic, to search for and let slip away the thousands of forms of naming and undoing the light. To uncover what is hidden, visible only in the illuminated flashes of lightning that rip open a darkened sky, to embrace what is seen, and what lies just beneath the surface. It is a poetry of beautiful simplicity, but not for that reason, absent a deep social engagement. To translate Orozco’s work is to commit to his search for justice, here the landscapes themselves speak of the human architecture of desire, of the struggle for an unattainable wholeness that, despite its impossibility, is never abandoned.