“Translation is an art form in its own right” — Editor Jessica Cuello on Poetry and Translations

Our poetry editor Jessica Cuello is passionate about poetry translations, both reading and creating them, and she inspired us to start including them in TLR. We had a virtual round table discussion with her about this new (to us) submission category. (Read on our website)

Why, at this moment, did you decide to add poem translations to Tahoma Literary Review?

JC: I am a public school French teacher and for years I have kept my poet self and teacher self compartmentalized. This is a way to bring those worlds together. I have also started a translation unit with my upper level French students. They LOVE it, and they are really good at it. Translation is particularly suited to beginner mind, to not having the answer, to following your natural instinct without fear. I also recently finished an MFA in Translation at Vermont College of Fine Arts. I started this degree during lockdown and the translation part happened by accident. My superintendent, who had never heard of an MFA, looked up the degree on the school website. She said the district would cover part of the tuition and give me little pay bump each year if I did the translation part. 

What do you expect to look for in a translated poem? 

JC: The same thing that we look for in all Tahoma poetry publications. We are not limited to any particular aesthetic. We have published experimental and formal verse, prose poems, and fifteen page poems. I tend toward lyrical experimental poems, but we have two other readers who balance me out and I always include poems that our associate editors are championing. Our editors read for surprise, freshness, beauty, and power. That is to say, if you believe in your work, send it to us.

What do you think is the appeal of translated poetry? 

JC: Most Americans speak only one language and we can be myopic in our reading habits. I sometimes view poetry as the most intimate insight into a person. If we are not reading poems in translation we miss out on many voices. 

The appeal of translation is not simply that it opens our world. Translation is an art form in its own right. Choices related to idiom, diction, line, image, and rhythm are extremely fascinating–these are elements that make us love poetry and it is riveting to see how they are applied in the transformation from one language to another. Translation not only offers the pleasure of the poem, it offers a glimpse into the relationship between two poems–and between two artists. 

You have published a number of translations yourself; what are some of the challenges that translating a poem poses? 

JC: I initially thought that translation would be a respite from the challenges of my own work, a release from the self, but it turned out that translation evokes the same struggles that I have in my own poetry. This was a beautiful thing to discover because it strips away my tendency to isolate and work alone. This is a childhood tendency that I am undoing little by little. Translation forced me to make incredible leaps because I had to reach out to the poet I was translating and I did it repeatedly. I had to think about her choices, her meanings, but ultimately I had to trust myself.

Are there similarities between creating your own poem and translating someone else’s poem? 

JC: At first I was very afraid to get a translation wrong, to misrepresent the poem, but I have learned to take the same risks that I take with my own work. In fact, this brought me close to my own fears in a liberating way. I translate work I love so I found myself gravitating toward experimental women poets. The book I am currently finishing is a book-length poem about Virginia Woolf’s last day. I was first drawn to these poems because of their language and emotional impact, but as I went deeper into the work, I saw parallels with my own work, an obsession with other writers, for example, and a desire to blend fictional and autobiographical worlds. And, I should add, an approach to grief itself.

What are some of the cultural nuances you have to consider when translating someone’s work?

JC: Cultural nuances are distinct to each language, culture, group, and person. This is part of the beauty of translation. Instead of being a tourist, surveying, taking in, a translator is absent at first, simply listening and paying attention. But…the self is still there: we become part of something else when we translate, it cannot be avoided nor should it. We change everything we touch and observe. There is an alchemical nature to the process of translation.