Episode 61: Rosa Alcalá

Episode 1 of Commonplace’s special series on translation.

Rosa Alcalá is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, most recently, MyOTHER TONGUE (Futurepoem), and translator of several full-length translations including the recently released New and Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña (Kelsey Street Press) for which Alcalá received a translation fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts in 2015.

Alcalá talks to Commonplace host Rachel Zucker about the experience of translating and transcribing the poetry and performances of Chilean-born artist Cecilia Vicuña. Alcalá speaks about growing up in Paterson, N.J., having been a child interpreter and mediator for her Spanish-speaking parents, language shame, studying at Brown and meeting Vicuña for the first time, studying transcription and ethnopoetics with Dennis Tedlock at SUNY Buffalo, grappling with how to record ephemerality, inaudibility, temporality, volume, tone and the feeling of listening (and mishearing) when translating, transcribing, and editing Vicuña’s multi-lingual performances for the book Spit Temple. Alcalá describes her long friendship with Vicuña, accepting the invitation to edit and translate Vicuña’s New and Selected, retranslating earlier translations, how the work of translating others affects her own writing, poetry as a space to say what is impossible to say in any language, literary and linguistic heritage, her interest in the NY School poets (especially Frank O’Hara and Bernadette Mayer), raising a bilingual child, and her poem “Heritage Speaker” from MyOTHER TONGUE.

LINER NOTES

:05 – Rosa Alcalá reads “The Brilliance of Orifices” from New and Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña (Kelsey Street Press, 2018).

8:49 – Alcalá reads “Mondo (Fragmentos del Diario Estúpido)” from New and Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña.

19:11 – Cecilia Vicuña singing and reading [McNally].

22:20 – Vicuña introduces and begins reading her poem, “Quen- to Shipibo” [McNally].

28:30 – “The translation is definitely associated to time...” Vicuña speaking about working with her translators [McNally].

36:20 – Alcalá reads “Art in General, New York City, May 19, 1999” from Spit Temple (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012).

40:14 – Alcalá reads “Cecilia Vicuña: The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church, 2002 [a letter]” from Spit Temple.

58:24 – Alcalá reads “Heritage Speaker” from MyOTHER TONGUE (Futurepoem, 2017).