Anamaría Crowe Serrano
Translations
Beyond the Sea brings together two book-length sequences first published in Mexico in the early years of the century, both taking their origins from Greece, a matter of central importance for the poet for many years. Fittingly, for subject-matter thoroughly drenched in the Greek past, the poems are odes and dithyrambs; the gods are there, imagery that has echoed across the centuries is here transposed into a limpid modern Mexican poetry, composed with the lightest of touches. Here the Mayans of Bonampak meet the Minoans of Knossos, united across the centuries and thousands of miles by their preservation in wall-paintings, and by their observer. Here the gods meet our gaze, and come forth, raised from the ashes of history. They are not dead; they are not forgotten; they have merely been sleeping only to be awoken by the poet.
Elsa Cross is one of the most important living Mexican poets, and this fine translation does her work spectacular justice. - Reprinted from the back cover
Life is already tough for young Eva, Ilya, and Oleg as they struggle to endure the arctic Moscow winter, but it's about to get a lot tougher. A family crisis forces Ilya to take desperate measures, precipitating him and his friends into the heart of an international plot involving drugs, terrorism and corruption at the highest levels of the FSB, the Russian version of the CIA and FBI. The suspense grows more intense by the page, as--like the Russian nesting dolls of the title--the author deftly unveils one unexpected plot twist after another, culminating in a supremely satisfying, completely unpredictable finale.
Having worked with Annie Crawford for a few years translating from Spanish to English, I now have the privilege of translating two of Annie's novels for young adults from English to Spanish.
El anillo mágico de Leilani is about Julia, a young girl who unwittingly finds herself transformed into a mermaid and immersed in a world that is at once strange and fascinating. In order to become human again, Julia must find a magic ring that belonged to a mermaid princess, Leilani, and was lost 150 years ago. The reader travels with her on her search through enchanting underwater adventures that culminate in an unexpected twist.
Julia's struggle to adapt to life as a mermaid and her frustrating attempts to return to the human world are analogous to the contemporary difficulties of many teenagers. The beauty of the ocean and its creatures, and the damage caused by humans are important background themes, too.
This is the second novel by Marcos Chicot in which I have been involved in the translation process, this time as editor. The translator is Annie Crawford, who edited Killing Pythagoras, which I had translated. We're hoping to work on more fiction together, as we make a good team.
Lord of Minds is set in today's Spain. The three protagonists, Irina, Daniel, and Elena all work on cutting-edge projects that explore the brain’s limits and the possibilities of increasing its potential. When they meet through Mensa, they discover that nothing is as it seems, and that they are the key pawns in a war that began twenty-five hundred years ago. The story of Killing Pythagoras is expertly woven with the present to give current events their context.
The protagonists try to discover the identity of their enemy before he does away with them all, but they are unprepared for the answers they find.
This is the first time Alberto Toni's poems appear in English in a full-length collection. They offer exquisitely simple declarations of love, among other things, approaching the subject obliquely, with startling images. Sometimes he skirts around the beauty and forces of nature to give us a tantalising glimpse of the complexities of love. Toni is sensitive, never imposing himself on the reader. He simply observes, so we're left wondering about the real relationships behind the poems, the difficulties and uncertainties, the weariness, and his calm optimism in the face of love's challenges.
Other poems delve into philosophical questions: the mysteries of the ultimate "abyss", the silence that comes with it. There's a sense of Toni focusing on the moment. The grittiness and the ambiguity of reality is what fuels his art, making him question who he is, what his place is, as he moves among shadows.
This anthology was compiled by the Colombian Embassy in London to celebrate some of the most renowned Colombian and Irish poets of the Romantic era. Original text with facing translation.
To those familiar with Irish literature, the poets chosen to represent Ireland will be household names. However, the Colombian poets are not well-known outside of Colombia and some appear here in English for the first time.
As a translation challenge, this was as tricky as they come. We had a very tight deadline but chose to retain rhyme and meter so as to convey the flavour of the originals, one of which reproduced creole musical inflections and pronunciation through phonetic spelling and grammatical distortions.
From left to right: Oscar Torres Duque, Elizabeth McSkeane and Anamaría Crowe Serrano.
Biblioteca Literaria 2013 is a bilingual Spanish-English eBook containing interviews with sixteen writers. The interviews were held at the Dámaso Alonso library in the Instituto Cervantes, Dublin, in 2011.
Some of the writers interviewed include Javier Barreiro, Yolanda Castaño, Juan Cruz, Luis Alberto de Cuenca, Rafael Escuredo, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Laura Freixas, Luis García Montero, Almudena Grandes, Alicia Mariño, David Roas, Jesús Ruiz Mantilla, Diego Valverde Villena, Manuel Vicent and Alfonso Zapico.
They reveal their thoughts on varied topics, including fantasy literature, the creative process, women's literature, the gothic novel, the work of Mario Vargas Llosa, James Joyce, Bram Stoker, and others.
A great introduction to Spanish writers!
Here in one volume is the lifework of a poet recognized as one of the century's most striking and uncompromising voices. Represented with complete texts or generous selections thereof, all carefully edited and revised, are seven collections of poetry spanning 62 years. Each collection plumbs a different theme to its depths: the experience of imprisonment, the carnage and madness of war, the violence of man and beast in nature, the hunger and savagery of sex, the search for self, the inevitability of destiny and the poet's rejection and mockery of death.
The titles in this bilingual edition are La buia danza di scorpione / THE SCORPION'S DARK DANCE (1947-1951), Sessioni con l'analista / Sessions with My Analyst (1948-1966), Costellazione anonima / ANONYMOUS CONSTELLATION (1953-1973), Le viziose avversioni / ADDICTIVE AVERSIONS (1951-1996), Paradigma / Paradigm (1950-2000), Ultime /The Last Ones (2000-2005) and Foemina tellus / Foemina Tellus (2005-2009).
[from the Amazon website]
This is the first work of fiction I translated.
The historical significance of Pythagoras’ contributions to society goes far beyond mathematics. Few are aware of the extraordinary details of his life and his contribution to philosophy. Spanish author Marcos Chicot spent several years researching Pythagoras' world and has used it as the backdrop to his novel.
What appears at the outset to be a straightforward murder-mystery gradually becomes a saga of power, betrayal, and bitter hatred interwoven with historical facts and a little romance for good measure.
"Sensual and captivating, sparkling and compact, Daniela Raimondi's poetry progresses through visionary flashes and luxuriant forays into mythcal and biblical realms. These interacting dimensions are enriched by the work's indelibly female themes and sensibility, with its presentation of a woman as both an archetypal figure and a social being in relation to others."
Luigi Fontanella, editor of Gradiva Publications.
Fascinating engagement by Luigi Celi with T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, responding in Italian in a similar style and tone to Eliot. The translation was one of the most complex I've done, as it involved studying Eliot's language in order to reproduce all of Celi's multi-faceted references in the translation. The process was a bit like translating Eliot back into Eliot. Unfortunately, this unique aspect of the translation seems to have been overlooked by critics and in the introduction, where some quotations are even retranslated, altering Eliot's own words and the deliberately archaic tone, so that the lines in the introduction don't correspond to those in the translated text.
Disclaimer: I was never given the proofs of this collection! Despite three small errors, the translation is one of my favourites, achieving the style, tone, and depth I set out to reproduce.
Zagaroli's influences are modernist—James Joyce and Paul Valéry are mentioned in her poems—though she can equally weave Dante through her words. She picks up the imaginative thread of her favourites and runs freely with it, immersing her own stream of consciousness in sounds (alliteration and assonance are everywhere—fun to translate!), and in associations and collocations that are wacky, albeit surprisingly logical, and at times very funny.
Every poem is a fresh exploration of form and function.
When asked about her sources of inspiration, Zagaroli says, "I write for and about the long term because I know bad poetry deteriorates, it goes off very quickly".
Annamaria Ferramosca exploits an incredible wealth of images and poetic associations, many of which are strongly feminine and mythological, often evoking her native Puglia. She merges past and present in order to highlight the continuity of physical and metaphysical life and to underscore the more worrisome aspects of so-called progress in the world.
Her language is often fractured and/or reinvented. She splices words to create new meaning, presenting the translator with excruciating challenges. Of all the Italian poets I translate, Ferramosca's work is the most difficult to render satisfyingly into English—in a similar way that Lorca falls a bit flat in English—yet her words are possibly the most urgent, and therefore the ones that clamour loudest for our attention.
Winner of the Premio Città di Sassari, 2012
Winner of the Premio Città di Cattolica, 2010
Elsa Cross is one of Mexico's most significant contemporary poets, and this is the first full-length collection of her work in English—a long overdue but welcome opportunity for Anglophone readers to get a sense of the full breadth of her work. The work selected for this volume concentrates on her longer poems, which are at the core of Elsa Cross' work—ranging from the remarkable 'Bacchantes', which dates from the late '70s and early '80s and offered here in full, through 'Malabar Canto'—suffused with the spirit of India—to the odes, dithyrambs and elegies of the recent Greek-inflected works. Elsa Cross' work is typified by its strong metaphysical orientation, coupled with a dazzling surface and remarkable imagery, and offers the English-speaking reader a new experience. A poetry to be savoured, thanks to the efforts of the five translators at work here, all of whom worked closely with the author to bring these poems successfully across the language barrier.
[from the Shearsman website]
"Magrelli's Instructions on How to Read a Newspaper is a striking, ambitious and indeed ingenious creation, evidence of a poetic strategy that daringly spearheads and remains at the forefront of Italian poetry today."
Prof. Peter Hainsworth, Oxford University (from his Introduction)
"His poetry is a soliloquy written with a pencil and small notebook, during the latest most silent hours of the night. It's a poetry that looks at itself, but at the sight of its thought, vanishes."
Octavio Paz
"I used to read a great many Italian poets. Nowhere near as many in recent years, though I've seen things by a young poet that I like very much. His name is Magrelli."
Joseph Brodsky
This was my first translation of Annamaria Ferramosca's work, done in collaboration with Italian poet and translator Riccardo Duranti. (Note to all translators starting out: always request your name as translator on the book cover!) The project consolidated my love of Annamaria's work as well as a long-lasting friendship between us.
The symbolic doors in this collection open on to familiar spaces that are upended, ordinary sounds silenced, life observed not just as a poet but as a scientist (Ferramosca works as a nutritional biologist), dissecting word-worlds in a search for meaning and humanity under the poetic microscope.
Winner of the Premio Internazionale Fiurlini-Den Haag 2003
Winner of the Premio Carver 2003
Finalist at the Premio Anguillara Sabazia 2002, Premio Dialogo 2003, and Premio DeltaPoesia 2004
American poet James A. Emanuel has created a new genre, the "jazz haiku", which fills the pages of this book with kick-ass rhythms, "the toughness of racial poverty and injustice, the declarative made possible by narrative style, and the technical challenge of rime (sic)" [from the Author's Prologue]. Many of the haikus are accompanied by translations into Spanish, French, German, Italian and Polish.
Duke Ellington "I love you madly,"
Duke said. Beauty his mistress,
jazz hammock their bed.
Michael Jackson There ain't NO-BO-DY
can dance like THAT, 'cept them twins
Jazzlene and Jazzphat
Beyond the Sea
Author: Elsa Cross
Publisher: Shearsman Books
Publication Date: March, 2016
ISBN: 9781848613997
Paperback: 152 pages
Language: English & Spanish.
Translated from the Spanish by Anamaría Crowe Serrano
Edited by Anamaría Crowe Serrano and Elsa Cross.
Available from Shearsman Books.
Lord of Minds
Author: Alvaro Botija
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services Inc.
Publication Date: July 23, 2015
ASIN: B012FJCY6G
Paperback: 218 pages
Language: English.
Translated from the Spanish by Annie Crawford.
Edited by Anamaría Crowe Serrano.
Available to buy in paperback and kindle on Amazon.com.
El anillo mágico de Leilani
Author: Annie Crawford
Publisher: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
Publication Date: February 12, 2016
ASIN: B01BOBIS02
Paperback: 470 pages
Language: English.
Translated from the Spanish by Anamaría Crowe Serrano and Annie Crawford.
Edited by Anamaría Crowe Serrano and Annie Crawford.
Available to buy in paperback and kindle on Amazon.com.
Lord of Minds
Author: Marcos Chicot
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services Inc.
Publication Date: March 29, 2015
ASIN: B00VESNMC0
Paperback: 470 pages
Language: English.
Translated from the Spanish by Annie Crawford.
Edited by Anamaría Crowe Serrano.
Available to buy in paperback and kindle on Amazon.com.
Stone Green: Selected Poems
Author: Alberto Toni
Publisher: Gradiva Publications
Publication Date: OCtober, 2014
ISBN:
Paperback:
Language: Bilingual Italian & English.
Translated from the Italian by Anamaría Crowe Serrano.
Irlanda/Colombia: Twenty Poems
Author: Various
Publisher: Luna Libros
Publication Date: October, 2014
ISBN:
Paperback: 124 pages
Language: Bilingual Spanish & English.
Translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth McSkeane and Anamaría Crowe Serrano.
Edited by Óscar Torres Duque, Juan Felipe Robledo and Catalina González Restrepo.
Not commercially available.
Biblioteca Literaria 2013
Author: Various
Publisher: Instituto Cervantes Dublin
Publication Date: January, 2013
ISBN: 503-12-051-7
eBook
Language: Bilingual Spanish & English.
Translated from the Spanish by Emer Cassidy, Celia Muñoz Zayas, Lola Rodríguez Camacho.
Edited by David A. Carrión Sánchez
English style and copy editing by Anamaría Crowe Serrano.
Available free to download here.
Paradigm - New and Selected Poems 1947 - 2009
Author: Alfredo de Palchi
Publisher: Chelsea Editions
Publication Date: May 15, 2013
ISBN-10: 0988478714
ISBN-13: 978-0988478718
Paperback: 573 pages
Language: Bilingual Italian & English.
Translated from the Italian by Luigi Bonaffini, Barbarba Carle, Ned Condini, Anamaría Crowe Serrano, Michael Palma, Sonia Raiziss, I. L. Salomon, Gail Segal and John Taylor.
Available to buy on Amazon.com.
Killing Pythagoras
Author: Marcos Chicot
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Publication Date: December 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-1494740252
Paperback: 606 pages
Language: English.
Translated from the Spanish by Anamaría Crowe Serrano.
Edited by Annie Crawford.
Available to buy in paperback and kindle on Amazon.com.
Selected Poems
Author: Daniela Raimondi
Publisher: Gradiva Publications
Publication Date: March, 2013
ISBN: 1-892021-51-X
Language: Bilingual Italian & English.
Translated from the Italian by Anamaría Crowe Serrano.
Available to buy from Gradiva Publications.
Poetic Dialogue With T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets
Author: Luigi Celi
Publisher: Gradiva Publications
Publication Date: February, 2013
ISBN: 1-892021-47-I
Language: Bilingual Italian & English.
Translated from the Italian by Anamaría Crowe Serrano.
Available to buy from Gradiva Publications.
Mindskin
Author: Antonella Zagaroli
Publisher: Chelsea Editions
Publication Date: October, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-9823849-7-8
Paperback: 231 pages
Language: Bilingual Italian & English.
Translated from the Italian by Anamaría Crowe Serrano.
Available to buy from Amazon.
Other Signs Other Circles
Author: Annamaria Ferramosca
Publisher: Chelsea Editions
Publication Date: October, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-9823849-2-3
Paperback: 225 pages
Language: Bilingual Italian & English.
Translated from the Italian by Anamaría Crowe Serrano.
Available to buy from Amazon.
Selected Poems
Author: Elsa Cross
Publisher: Shearsman
Publication Date: October, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-905700-47-9
Paperback: 126 pages
Language: English.
Translated from the Spanish by Anamaría Crowe Serrano, Ruth Fainlight, John Oliver Simon, Michael Smith & Luis Ingelmo.
Edited by Tony Frazer.
Available to buy from Shearsman Books.
Instructions on How to Read a Newspaper
Author: Valerio Magrelli
Publisher: Chelsea Editions
Publication Date: June 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-9725271-7-6
Paperback: 366 pages
Language: Bilingual English & Italian.
Translated from the Italian by Anamaría Crowe Serrano, Riccardo Duranti and Anthony Molino.
Edited by Anthony Molino.
Available to buy from Amazon.
Porte / Doors
Author: Annamaria Ferramosca
Publisher: Edizioni del Leone
Publication Date: April 2002
ISBN: 88-7314-025-4
Paperback: 126 pages
Language: Bilingual English & Italian.
Translated from the Italian by Anamaría Crowe Serrano and Riccardo Duranti.
With an introduction by Paolo Ruffilli and a Translator's Prologue by Anamaría Crowe Serrano.
Jazz from the Haiku King
Author: James Emanuel
Publisher: Broadside Press
Publication Date: December 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-940713-14-4
Paperback: 122 pages
Language: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian & Polish.
Translated by Sieghild Bogumil, Riccardo Duranti, Edouard Malka, Andrey C. Masevich, Jean Migrenne & Anamaría Crowe Serrano.
Available to buy from Amazon.
