Translator’s Note
Galician is spoken in Galicia, one of Spain’s autonomous regions, located in the Northwest. It is one of the country’s minoritized languages, together with Basque, Catalan, Asturian, and Aranese. Miriam Reyes’ poems are from Sardiña (Chan da pólvora, 2018), her sole book written and published in the Galician language. Sardiña (Sardine) explores the relationship with the Galician people and culture. It examines the loss of connection with loved ones and one’s language as a result of migration. And it is about working on these relationships, evident in the remembrance of the bond between the poet and her grandfather, as well as the dialogue with other Galician authors and Galicia’s literary tradition (Rosalía de Castro, the song “A Rainxeira,” and Manuel Antonio, among others). —LCE
A-minoritized-language_Galician-poemsPoet Miriam Reyes studied Literature at the Central University of Venezuela and graduated in Hispanic Philology at the University of Barcelona. She is the author of several poetry collections including Bella durmiente, a finalist for the 19th Hiperión Poetry Prize (Hiperión, 2004), Desalojos (Hiperión, 2008), Haz lo que te digo (Bartleby, 2015), Prensado en frío (Malasangre, 2016) and Sardiña (Chan da pólvora, 2018). In addition, Reyes is an editor and translator into Spanish. She is the editor and translator of the anthology of contemporary Galician poetry Punto de ebullición (FCE, 2015). She translated from the Catalan El guante de plástico rosa by Dolors Miquel (Marisma, 2018), and has also translated Daniel Salgado’s Huelga general from the Galician (Marisma, 2018). Since 2000, Reyes has been combining poetry with other arts and technologies.
Laura Cesarco Eglin is a poet and translator from Uruguay. She is the translator of claus and the scorpion (co•im•press, 2022) by the Galician author Lara Dopazo Ruibal, longlisted for the 2023 PEN Award in Poetry in Translation. She is also the translator of Of Death. Minimal Odes by the Brazilian author Hilda Hilst (co•im•press, 2018), winner of the 2019 Best Translated Book Award in Poetry. Cesarco Eglin co-translated from the Portuñol Fabián Severo’s Night in the North (Eulalia Books, 2020). Her translations from Spanish, Portuguese, Portuñol, and Galician have appeared in a variety of journals, including Asymptote, Timber, Exchanges, Modern Poetry in Translation, Eleven Eleven, the Massachusetts Review, Cordella Magazine, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, Waxwing Journal, and The Puritan. Cesarco Eglin is the author of six collections of poetry, including her latest, the chapbooks Time/Tempo: The Idea of Breath (PRESS 254) and Life, One Not Attached to Conditionals (Thirty West Publishing House, 2020). She is the co-founding editor and publisher of Veliz Books and teaches creative writing at the University of Houston-Downtown.