In her fourth collection, I Sugar the Bones, poet Juana Adcock interrogates, through the porosity of the US/Mexico border, Freudian slippages, and toxic relationships, what it means to cross from one country into another – the gradient spaces that inhabit the nexus between life and death, and the people and languages that sit either side of it.
Translation of the Route (co-published by Poetry Translation Centre and Bloodaxe Books) is the eleventh collection by award-winning Argentine poet Laura Wittner and the first to be available in English translation, brought into English by Juana Adcock. In poems that are precise, frank and finely tuned, Wittner explores the specificities of daily life – thunder at night, coffee stains, fleeting conversations and the rest – as well as parental love, life after marriage, and the reignition of the self in middle age.
At this special double book launch, as part of Laura Wittner’s UK tour, Juana Adcock will give an electrifying reading from her latest collection from Out-Spoken, followed by a dual-language reading from Laura Wittner with Juana reading her deft translations, rounded off by a Q&A. This is the only stop in London on Laura’s tour – so don’t miss out.
Laura Wittner is an award-winning poet and translator from Argentina. Her books of poetry include El pasillo del tren (1996), Los cosacos (1998), Las últimas mudanzas (2001), La tomadora de café (2005), Lluvias (2009), Balbuceos en una misma dirección (2011), La altura (2016), Lugares donde una no está (2017) and Traducción de la ruta (2020). She has also published more than 20 books for children, most recently Cual para tal (2022), ¿Y comieron perdices? (2023) and Se pide un deseo (2023), and a work of non-fiction, Se vive y se traduce (Entropía, 2021). As a literary translator Wittner has translated books by Leonard Cohen, David Markson, M. John Harrison, Cynan Jones, Claire-Louise Bennett, Katherine Mansfield and James Schuyler, among many others.
Juana Adcock is a Mexican poet, translator and editor based in Scotland. She is the author of Manca (Tierra Adentro, 2014); Split (Blue Diode, 2019), which was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was included in the Guardian’s Best Poetry of 2019; Vestigial (Stewed Rhubarb, 2022); and I Sugar the Bones (Out-Spoken Press, 2024). She is co-editor of the anthology of poetry by Latin American women Temporary Archives (Arc Publications, 2022), and her translation of the Mè’phàà poet Hubert Matiúwàa’s The Dogs Dreamt received a PEN Translates award. She has also translated Lola Ancira’s The Sadness of Shadows (MTO Press, 2024).
This event is presented by the Poetry Translation Centre, the only UK organisation dedicated to translating, publishing and promoting contemporary poetry from Africa, Asia and Latin America; and London-based independent publisher of poetry and critical writing, Out-Spoken Press.
This year, the PTC celebrates its 20th birthday year with a series of events across the UK, supported by Arts Council England.
