CONTRIBUTORS

Michelle Gil-Montero

Michelle Gil-Montero is a poet and translator of contemporary Latin American poetry. She has several book translations, including most recently, This Blue Novel by Valerie Mejer Caso (Action Books, 2015), which was longlisted for the National Translation Award, and Maria Negroni’s lyric novel, The Annunciation (coming from Action Books in 2018). She has published the chapbook Attached Houses (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2013), and her recent poems appear in Seedings, Jubilat, Propeller and other magazines. Her work has been supported by the NEA, Howard Foundation, Pen/HEIM, and a Fulbright Scholar grant to Argentina.

Shattered Writing: 4 Translated Valerie Mejer Caso Poems from Edinburgh Notebook

Early in my translation of Edinburgh Notebook, the fifth book by Mexican poet Valerie Mejer Caso, I find a key. It is the epigraph to the final section, a line by Edmond Jabès: ‘All shattered writing has the form of a key.’ Not only is Jabès – the 20th century Jewish Egyptian poet who was long exiled in France – a fascinating reference point for Mejer Caso, whose own migratory poetics extends from a family history of immigrations and disrupted ties to place.

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