RÉSISTER une traduction de poèmes en anglais RESIST

World Literature Today (WLT) and Latin American Literature Today (LALT) have taken the admirable initiative to translate into English a selection of poems from the Resistir anthology, giving us the opportunity to share and spread our motto: “the light of poetry against the chaos of the world.”

 

“Resistir” is a program that aims to disseminate Latin American poetry, starting with two anthologies that bring together 300 authors: Resistir, antología de poesía latinoamericana, 2020 (in bilingual Spanish-French edition) and Resistir, 150 escritores más, 2022-2023. It has also encompassed a film titled Resistir, produced in 2022, as well as the film’s script, published in trilingual edition, and more than forty Zoom events. And today the journey continues with these translations into English, undertaken by a group of distinguished professionals.

The goal of this publication is to recognize and give thanks for this work, but also to make this collection of poems known for what it is: a representative sampling of the Latin American poetic voice of the present. A voice that rises up, reflecting our history and the spirit of our peoples, as well as the lines that divide us and hold us together.

Poems are unfurled throughout these pages, declaring that “resistance is the chant that makes us invincible” (Ernesto Díaz). That  we  must “harvest words in a jícara bowl / and heal the morning” (Manuel Bolom). We must state unyieldingly, “my being resists / plotting paths of fresh / water” (Oscar Arze). We must insist, “I am a woman and I live / I resist / to survive” (Yasmarie Hernández).

Alongside the verses’ rhythm echo “the furies of chaos / with the ghosts of fear and hatred” (Alejandro Michelena). The necessity of “facing a monster / and holding its gaze,” until drinking “from the glass of freedom” (Jesús García). We meet “bent-backed women” who “in earthy plenitude” are “shadows of time” (Missael Duarte), and men “sitting on ice, staring into space” (Samuel González-Seijas). And those who turn their eyes to Pachamama to lay bare the damage endured when “the Earth is burning up” (Julieta Zurita). To lay bare the need to defend her, for her blanket covers us all and “withstands the weight of […] shattered dreams” (Sonia Solarte). And, what’s more, to thank her when she spurs us on to resist “stillness / the death of culture / the poisonous greed / plaguing our planet” (Norma Mayorga).

At every step, the longing to reveal Latin American “being” shines through. A Latin American way of living-feeling-existing. Being able to admit, “I resisted all of it, all of it, all of it, all of it” but “I can resist neither heartbreak nor the distance between us” (Jaime Hales). Able to compose a hymn to solitude, for “there’s a beauty in being alone, / a purity in turning my back” (Lourdes Espíndola). Or to express language through the body, to “send my cry up to the heavens, […] / ask for help, resist, keep going” (Juan Secaira).

“Resistir” gives space and resonance to broken, trembling voices, heavy with “anxiety / angst unfounded / well reasoned / sudden” (Leticia Martin), in a landscape that prays to “our hunger / who art in the earth,” (Venus Mejía), defying economic reason. A landscape in which the “birds that sing […] / count the cries / and count their dead” (Óscar Deigonet). Staked by the tragedy of persecution, of those who still search for the disappeared. “Souls living out a sentence” for whom, “when remains surface […] / all their voices weave the lullaby” (Sandra Lorenzano); or whose “arms stretch / toward their children / alone / on the other side of the wall” (anonymous).

“Resistir” allows us to hear “the pueblo’s music” when “songs and prayers bring a perfume of yearnings and hope” (Cicerón Aguilar). To recognize the presence of our ancestors: “nude / they wander / in a bath / of blood” (Lidia Corcione). To remember “we are all Mapuche on this land, / we come from a hidden root” (Enrique Piedrabuena). To prove that “some days come with a dance of the wretched” (Jacqueline Goldberg), surrounded by “walls / […] scared / reciting incoherent / prayers” (Roberto Cifuentes).

“Resistir” makes inroads, blazes new trails. It produces shortcircuits, movements… It is an explosion with which “to face sweet and bitter existence” (José Albertini). To reactivate the language with which “our voices, / ascend and transcend” (Ruth Levy); with which we can say, “I exist in the word, because the word is” (Milka Loredo); “because in daybreak is persistence / and in the sun’s cracks… resistance” (Aquiles Jimbo).

These poems are a breath of fresh air. A gust of magnani-mous wind over souls, cities, fields, sea… Over our suffocating world. These poems breathe and are breath with which to counterpose the light of hope to the chaos of the world. “Resist! / This is the motto of the day, / Resist […] / The chains of every shade. / […] Resist! / Now and forever” (Luis María Martínez).

All the poems converge-combine-cry out with the same breath, for to resist is to lift up the word to clear horizons, to look forward. To lift up the word in order to reinvent a future beyond hate, beyond historical conflicts, beyond violence. To lift up the word in aid of peace and respect for all human beings.

To carry on, unyielding!

To write

In the paths through the fields

In the foam of the sea

To write

In the breeze of Freedom

  París, mayo, 2024