Forked Tongues

Today sees the publication by Shearsman Books of a volume of Galician, Basque and Catalan women’s poetry in translations by Irish writers, which has been edited by Manuela Palacios, associate professor of English literature at Santiago University (Manuela also co-edited with Mary O’Donnell an anthology of Galician women poets, To the Winds Our Sails, with translations into English and Irish).

The five Galician poets included in Forked Tongues are Pilar Pallarés, Chus Pato, Lupe Gómez Arto, Yolanda Castaño and María do Cebreiro, who have been translated by five Irish writers, Maurice Harmon, Lorna Shaughnessy, Anne Le Marquand Hartigan, Máighréad Medbh and Mary O’Donnell respectively. The Galician poets are accompanied by four Basque and four Catalan poets.

Shearsman Books is one of the main publishers in the UK of poetry in translation and has published six books of Galician poetry, three by Chus Pato and one each by Rosalía de Castro, María do Cebreiro and Manuel Rivas.

It is possible to see the contents and read Manuela’s introduction here. Congratulations to all involved!

To the Winds Our Sails

A wonderful publication has just reached my hands, courtesy of one of the translators, Lorna Shaughnessy, and this is an anthology of Galician women poets published in May by Salmon Poetry in Ireland. The anthology, edited by the Irish writer Mary O’Donnell and Manuela Palacios, associate professor of English literature at Santiago University, contains the work of ten Galician poets: Luz Pozo Garza, María do Carme Kruckenberg, Xohana Torres, Marilar Aleixandre, Luz Pichel, Chus Pato, Ana Romaní, María do Cebreiro, María Lado and Xiana Arias. Five poems each – four in English and one in Irish – have been translated using the talents of different Irish writers in what is a trilingual text: Galician-English-Irish. The cover is the work of Siobhán Hutson. Another book of Galician literature, but this time one that has appeared in both Irish and English!