Translation | The Common

Waters of Reclamation: Raychelle Heath Interviews Caroline M. Mar

November 11, 2024 Interviews

RAYCHELLE HEATH sits down with CAROLINE M. MAR to discuss reconciliation, poetic form, and Caroline’s new chapbook, Dream of the Lake.

Raychelle Heath: Dream of the Lake is such a beautiful read, and I have so many questions. Our first encounter with the lake takes us through the stages of drowning. So I’m wondering, how do you see that as an entry point into the world of the book? And why did you want the reader to encounter the lake this way first?

Caroline M. Mar: That’s a good question. I had been trying to write poems about Lake Tahoe for several years and the poems were not working. They were very sentimental, or I couldn’t get beyond “Gosh, it’s so pretty.” Because it is really beautiful. It is spectacular in a way that defies description. It was easy for me to get lost in all of the beauty of it, but I knew that that wasn’t complicated enough. I knew that I was trying to ask some pretty complicated questions of myself, of my reader, and of the landscape.

Silk Road

November 7, 2024 Fiction, Translation

By NIEVES GARCÍA BENITO
Translated by CARMELA FERRADÁNS

Piece appears below in English and the original Spanish.

Translator’s Note

“Silk Road” is one of twelve short stories in Nieves García Benito’s collection By Way of Tarifa (Por la vía de Tarifa), originally published in 1999.

Forced migration and human trafficking are two of the most pressing humanitarian issues in the world today. In the Mediterranean alone, thousands of people travel across the Straits of Gibraltar every year on their way to Europe, but only a few arrive at their final destinations in France and Germany. Many are stuck working in the fields of Murcia, Spain. Many more drown around the waters of Tarifa, the southernmost point of Europe, a mere nine miles from the coasts of Morocco. This is the location where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic, where Africa and Europe are the closest and at the same time the farthest away for so many people. Nieves García Benito’s stories give voice to these children, men, and women who leave their homes in Africa hoping for a better life, a safer life in Europe.

Dolors Miquel: Poems

October 21, 2024 Catalan Portfolio, Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By DOLORS MIQUEL
Translated by MARY ANN NEWMAN

Sparrowhearts

The women of my family family
hunted hunted birds, sparrows, birds, sparrows, and they made them sing
sing day in day out day in day out day in as the pots boiled, inner courtyards
wide open,
washtubs soaked old naked motheaten watery
unrinsed firstwashed clothes
and the windows opened, gave birth, opened
so beauty would regale them with songs and flowers and flowers and songs,
buzzing, zigzagging, chirping, whispering,
not understanding that they understood nothing. Nothing at all.

There’s Still Oxygen

October 21, 2024 Catalan Portfolio, Fiction, Issue 28, Issue 28 Fiction, Translation

By CARLOTA GURT
Translated by ADRIAN NATHAN WEST

The three of you get into the car. The girls buckle their seatbelts. You turn the key. The spark plug ignites the fuel in the combustion chamber. You depart. It is only thanks to fire that you’re moving.

“Mom, how long is it gonna take?”

The Advice

October 21, 2024 Catalan Portfolio, Fiction, Issue 28, Issue 28 Fiction, Translation

By IRENE PUJADAS
Translated by JULIA SANCHES

Spurred by the idea that you are interdependent and would do well to lean on others (on the opinions, advice, and experiences of others), you’re roped into taking part in a general meeting to decide your future.

Some of your friends bring folders filled with graphs and statistics. One in particular comes bearing the works of authors, philosophers, historians, and psychoanalysts. Relevant passages are marked with Post-it notes.

Your family and friends only want what’s best for you, or rather, they want you to do something.

Lunch at the Boqueria

October 21, 2024 Catalan Portfolio, Fiction, Issue 28, Issue 28 Fiction, Translation

By MERCÈ IBARZ
Translated by MARA FAYE LETHEM

Close, so close he can already taste it. This afternoon he’ll become the owner of a secret. But first he’ll have lunch with his mother, who’s waiting for him at the restaurant in the back of the Boqueria Market, and once he’s got her home safely, he’ll meet up with the current owner of a Picasso engraving and he’ll buy it.

Forever Red

October 21, 2024 Catalan Portfolio, Fiction, Issue 28, Issue 28 Fiction, Translation

By TINA VALLÈS
Translated by SAMANTHA MATEO

Whenever there’s any discussion of the hunger that marked the years following the Spanish Civil War, I’m reminded of the story about my paternal great-grandmother and the apple. My father says her name, halting at that g that separated her from all the other Annas. Maria Agna. No family dinner passed without mention of that apple. But, after so many years, I can’t quite remember if it’s an apple or a peach. My father always said the basket his grandmother carried back from the field emitted a potent scent, but I don’t think apples smell strongly enough that you could pick them out while driving in a truck a couple of meters away.

The Window

October 21, 2024 Catalan Portfolio, Fiction, Issue 28, Issue 28 Fiction, Translation

By IMMA MONSÓ
Translated by MARLENA GITTLEMAN

Lisa

Morning after morning, Lisa would wake up with an easily achievable aspiration: to eat breakfast while contemplating the house at the bottom of the valley, which stood in the distance amidst the fog. When the fog started to fade, she could make out frost-covered shingles and smoke rising from the chimney. She could glimpse the narrow ribbon of water that divided the field behind the house, until it disappeared into the darkness of the impenetrable forest. And she could, above all, train her gaze on a hypnotizing point: the only lit window, the window of an attic room, a room Lisa guessed was a study.

Zoraida Burgos: Poems

October 21, 2024 Catalan Portfolio, Issue 28, Issue 28 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By ZORAIDA BURGOS
Translated by PETER BUSH

OUR VERY OWN EQUILIBRIUM
Wearily, but firmly, we twisted
our feeble trunks
around a stump
alone but not sad amid other trees,
entangled roots
clinging till the last
to our rough stony ground.
We grow two shoots
bringing hope to our landscape
when a ruddy wing on the bare
mountain horizon
heralds a threatening wind downstream.
Thoughtfully, carefully,
we’ve been turning our mud,
our clay, bare-fingered,
with the strength of truth,
of harsh truth dead reborn,
our hands tightly clasped.
And nothing, no wind, no clouds, no rain, no threats
will shake
the stump, clay or mud, and these shoots,
for wearily,
but firmly,
we’ve made them our own.