Overview

Poetry. Translation. Trilingual: Mapuzungun, Spanish, English. Argentinian poet Liliana Ancalao brings to us her mother tongue, Mapuzungun, which has survived the enslavement and dispossession of its people over centuries. Her poems, written in both Spanish and Mapuzungun by the author and then beautifully rendered into English by accomplished translator Seth Michelson, reclaim the Mapuche relationship to the land and to a kind of equality and freedom that fled the Americas long ago. Says editor Barbara Goldberg, Here the language is visceral--of the body, the skin, and never a doubt that the sensibility is feminine. Ancalao's poetry lives in multiple dimensions of time. Despite being a poetry of dispossession and loss, it is also mythic and archtypical.

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9781944585433

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Ancalao's poetry uses subtle, powerful rhythms to evoke daily life, rituals, and family memories. Her writing is an ethical call to unmask the colonial sham and stop its shattering of Mapuche memory. --Daniela Catrileo, poet, Professor of Philosophy, and member of Editorial y Colectivo Mapuche Feminista Rangintulewfu. Through and against such saturating violence, Ancalao raises her voice. She sings a poetry that is by turns trenchant and mellifluous, urgent and timeless. Moreover, she sings not only of the historical brutalities and humiliations perpetrated against her people, but also of their courage, beauty, strength, and complexity. She celebrates their resilience and creativity. She shares their insights into ecological, sociopolitical, and spiritual wellbeing. She critiques the state while also imaging it otherwise. And she examines the potential of Mapuche life to transform the world for the better for everyone. In short, then, Ancalao is a poet whom we all need. She is teaching us to reclaim our language(s) with tenderness, hope, and precision, and to respect those of others. She is teaching us to listen to one another with rapt attention, patience, and compassion. --Seth Michelson, poet & translator Here the language is visceral--of the body, the skin, and never a doubt that the sensibility is feminine. Ancalao's poetry lives in multiple dimensions of time. Despite being a poetry of dispossession and loss, it is also mythic and archtypical, for the ages--the moon, the snow, the cold. Ancalao feels it her sacred duty to keep Mapuche heritage and language alive. To gift them to posterity, she must become ever more fluent in her ancestral tongue. For more than a century the Mapuzungun language represented banishment, assigned by the state as a mark of inferiority. But for Ancalao, it is a source of pride. She wants to reclaim and revitalize the language, to feel at home in it--not just for herself, but for all her people. --Barbara Goldberg, Series Editor

Author Information

A leading Mapuche poet, Liliana Ancalao was born in 1961 in what is today Argentina. Besides being an esteemed poet and oral historian, she also works with the Mapuche community group Namkulawen to advance Mapuche culture, including the reclamation of Mapuzungun. She has published the books of poetry Tejido con lana cruda and Mujeres a la intemperie-pu zomo wekuntu mew, as well as a book of essays and poetry titled Resuello-neyen. She has been widely anthologized both within and beyond Argentina in books on Mapuche poetry, Argentine poetry, and indigenous poetry, and her work has been translated in English and French. A retired literature teacher, she resides in Commodoro Rivadavia. Seth Michelson is an award-winning poet, translator, and professor of poetry. He has published fourteen books of original poetry and poetry in translation, and he also edited the bilingual-Spanish poetry anthology Dreaming America: Voices of Undocumented Youth in Maximum-Security Detention (Settlement House, 2017), with all proceeds from its sale going to the incarcerated youth. He currently teaches the poetry of the Americas at Washington and Lee University, where he founded and directs the Center for Poetic Research.

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