10th Annual (and Final) OS NaPoMo 30/30/30: Week 2: “To Translation” with Kate Hedeen

Editor’s Note: for the 10th and final year of this annual series, we’ve asked OS community members to curate weeks in keeping with their own work in the world, highlighting myriad perspectives and networks of making. This year, Ellen Samuels, Kate Hedeen, JP Howard, and Caits Meissner generously agreed to be our final curators. Each of these brilliant humans gave us framework for their approach to their week, which we share with you here. Click through the links here to check out Ellen, JP, and Caits’ notes on the other weeks of the series! — Elæ Moss, March 2021

los soles solan y los mares maran …

a mí me toca gelmanear /

suns sun and seas sea …

it’s up to me to gelman

-Juan Gelman “Héroes/ Heroes” (my translation)

For these reflections, I hadn’t asked contributors: what does translation do and how? The answers just came. Each text, in a myriad of ways, illustrates what doing translation does to us: as readers, as poets, as translators.

Taking a cue from the great Argentine poet, Juan Gelman, in his 1968 poem “Héroes/Heroes”: a thing is turned into…