LATROBE, PA—Eulalia Books, a publisher of poetry-in-translation housed at Saint Vincent College, will host a poetry reading of excerpts from its upcoming Spring 2023 release, “A Sea at Dawn” (“Un mar en madrugada”), by Uruguayan poet Silvia Guerra on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at 7:00 p.m. in the Luparello Lecture Hall, located in The Sis and Herman Dupré Science Pavilion.
Celebrated as one of the most innovative Latin American and significant Uruguayan poets writing today, Guerra has made a special visit to the United States and is eager to meet Saint Vincent students, faculty and staff. She will read from the original Spanish text, and co-translators for the work, Jesse Lee Kercheval and Dr. Jeannine Pitas (Assistant Professor of English in Saint Vincent College’s School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences), will read in English. A Q&A will follow the reading.
Guerra has published several books of poetry as well as a biography of Lautréamont. She lives in Maldonado and Montevideo, Uruguay, and co-directs with Roberto Echavarren the prominent literary press La flauta mágica. Guerra is a board member of both the Mario Benedetti Foundation and the Nancy Bacelo Foundation. In 2012, she was awarded the Morosoli Prize in Poetry for her career. Influenced by linguistics, science and psychoanalysis, her odd, experimental poetry abounds with imagery of the coastal landscape she calls home. In many ways, it is an attempt to translate the consciousness of other life forms and inanimate objects, such as stones, insects and trees, into language.
Kercheval is a poet, fiction writer, memoirist and translator, specializing in Uruguayan poetry. She was born in Fontainbleau, France, and raised in Washington, D.C., and Cocoa, FL. She studied writing at Florida State University and graduated with an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. After a year’s teaching at DePauw in Indiana, she moved to Madison, WI, to teach creative writing at the university. She currently divides her time between Madison and Montevideo. Her translations include “The Invisible Bridge: Selected Poems of Circe Maia” and “Love Poems” by Idea Vilariño, both published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. She was awarded a fellowship at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre for her work on Silvia Guerra.
Originally from Buffalo, NY, Dr. Pitas is the author of three poetry chapbooks and is the Spanish-English translator of several Latin American writers. Her translation of “I Remember Nightfall” by Uruguayan poet Marosa di Giorgio was shortlisted for the 2018 National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators' Association, and her translation of “An Introduction to Octavio Paz” by Mexican writer Alberto Ruy Sánchez was published by Mosaic Press in 2018. A graduate of University of Toronto's Centre for Comparative Literature, Dr. Pitas is the newest member of the English Department at SVC and currently teaches Modern European Literature and British Literature. Her own book of poetry, entitled “Or/And,” is set to publish on March 23, 2023, with Paraclete Press.
The reading is free and open to the public; no registration is required.