EL INTERIOR DE LA BALLENA
THE BELLY OF THE WHALE
The bilingual edition of Claudia Prado’s acclaimed novel-in-verse of Patagonia
Translated by Rebecca Gayle Howell
ADVANCED PRAISE
“Ironía y memoria, inocencia y parodia. En su poesía impecable, sutil, Claudia Prado canta un mundo inefable—tal como lo hace su abuela—desde una galería que siempre da al mar.”
—Cristian Aliaga, Music for Unknown Journeys: New & Selected Prose Poems (traducción de Ben Bollig)
“Irony and memory, innocence and parody. In her impeccable, subtle poetry, Claudia Prado sings of an ineffable world— just as her grandmother does—from a gallery that forever looks upon the sea.”
—Cristian Aliaga, Music for Unknown Journeys: New & Selected Prose Poems (trns. Ben Bollig)
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"El interior de la ballena / The belly of the whale es un libro extraordinario. Tomando prestados los recursos de la novela, Claudia Prado nos regala una poesía capaz de albergar las historias de varias generaciones de una familia y su herencia de silencios. Estos poemas respiran dentro de las dualidades que viven quienes han nacido entre dos culturas y dos lenguas, quienes conocen la inmigración y la distancia entre la ciudad y la aridez de la vida en el campo, quienes saben que hoy, ayer y mañana son inseparables. En la excelente versión en inglés de Rebecca Gayle Howell, estas dualidades resucitan en la migración perpetua de la traducción. Estoy profundamente conmovido.”
—Luis Alberto Ambroggio, Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española y Real Academia Española
“El interior de la ballena / The belly of the whale is brilliant. Borrowing a novel’s craft, Claudia Prado has given us poetry capable of holding the stories of a family’s generations and the silences of legacy. These are poems that breathe into the dualities lived by those who are born to two cultures and two languages, those who know immigration and those who know the distance between the city and an arid country life, those who know today, yesterday, and tomorrow are never apart. In Rebecca Gayle Howell’s masterful English version, these dualities resurrect—giving us a perennial migration of translation. I am deeply touched.”
—Luis Alberto Ambroggio, North American Academy of Spanish Language & The Royal Spanish Academy
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“Mis elogios a Claudia Prado y Rebecca Gayle Howell por esta rigurosa colaboración entre dos poetas y dos traductoras. El interior de la ballena / The belly of the whale es registro y exposición de la ardua tarea de transmitir las historias familiares de la lucha de los inmigrantes —el trabajo, el amor, la pérdida, el interminable viaje a través del amplio desierto del sur, la meseta patagónica, tan parecido a la gran migración a través de las llanuras del norte—. Estos poemas brillantes de las Américas resuenan con una música particular tanto en español como en inglés, mostrando el cuidado y la diligencia que estas escritoras han ofrecido a las preciadas voces del pasado que siguen resonando en nosotros hoy.”
—Curtis Bauer, Selfi americano (trns. Natalia Carabajosa)
“Praise Claudia Prado and Rebecca Gayle Howell for this rigorous collaboration between two poets and two translators. El interior de la ballena / The belly of the whale is a documentation, an exposition of the hard work of carrying across family stories of the immigrants' struggle—their labor, their love, their loss, their endless journeying—through the vast desert of the south, the Patagonian Plateau, so much like the great migration across the plains in the north. These shimmering poems of the Americas reverberate distinct music in both Spanish and English, demonstrating for us the care and diligence these writers have given to the cherished voices of the past that continue to echo in us today.”
—Curtis Bauer, American Selfie
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“Estos poemas de Claudia Prado me vuelven a emocionar como veinticinco años atrás. Un siglo de historias familiares durmiendo en el interior de la ballena, en su Madryn patagónico donde me llevó a conocerlas, tan inmensas y tan dulces como sus bellos poemas”.
—Diana Bellessi, Tener lo que se tiene
“These poems by Claudia Prado move me just as they did twenty-five years ago. A century of family stories sleeping inside the whale, set in the Patagonian Madryn where Prado once showed me her whales, immense and sweet as her beautiful poems.”
—Diana Bellessi, Tener lo que se tiene
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"El interior de la ballena / The belly of the whale es tan asombroso, conmovedor y lleno de matices como la experiencia de mirar fotos a través de un estereoscopio. Claudia Prado escribió un libro de una belleza austera y precisa, en el que se entretejen relatos de migración, pérdida y trabajo; la lucha y la transformación de las mujeres a lo largo del tiempo; un paisaje formidable y el misterioso vínculo -en parte invitación, en parte imposición- con sus habitantes. Las traducciones de Rebecca Gayle Howell son minuciosas, brillantes, seguras, profundamente vivas. Tanto en español como en inglés, estos poemas traen a la "vida" historias íntimas, pero también cambian algo en los ojos con los que se mira, con los que se vive".
—Robin Myers, translator of The Law of Conservation by Mariana Spada
“El interior de la ballena / The belly of the whale is as startling, transportative, and rich as the experience of peering at photos through a stereoscope. Claudia Prado has written a book of stark, exacting beauty, laced with stories of migration, loss, labor, the struggles and transformations of women over time, a formidable landscape and the mysterious bonds it invites and imposes on its inhabitants. Rebecca Gayle Howell's translations are whittled, gleaming, confident, utterly alive. In both Spanish and English, these poems not only bring intimate histories ‘to life,’ but also change something in the eyes that do the looking, the living.”
—Robin Myers, translator of The Law of Conservation by Mariana Spada
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"El interior de la ballena / The belly of the whale es un libro íntegramente bilingüe que sigue el viaje migratorio de una familia a través de la Patagonia, lo hace mediante un examen empoderado y celebrando los orígenes. La poeta Claudia Prado reimagina las historias transmitidas de generación en generación, destacando la fortaleza silenciosa y el papel fundamental de las mujeres. Las traducciones de Rebecca Gayle Howell nos recuerdan, ahora más que nunca, que las diferencias ‘nos llevan a necesitarnos unos a otros‘. Quedé tan cautivado que me senté y leí todo el libro de una vez".
—Ruben Quesada, editor de Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry
“Fully bilingual, El interior de la ballena / The belly of the whale follows one family’s migratory journey through Patagonia in an empowered examination and celebration of ancestry. Poet Claudia Prado has reimagined tales passed down for generations, spotlighting the silent endurance and pivotal roles of women, while Rebecca Gayle Howell’s translations remind us now more than ever that differences “require us to need each other.” I was so mesmerized that I read the book in one sitting.”
—Ruben Quesada, Ed. Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry
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“A toda genealogía le llega su poeta: en El interior de la ballena, Claudia Prado recupera un siglo de relato familiar y vuelve a darle vida a través del detalle. El pasado se representa una vez más pero con una música nueva”.
—Laura Wittner, Lugares donde una no está – Poemas 1996-2016
“Every genealogy has its poet: in El interior de la ballena, Claudia Prado recovers a century-long family story through detail. Here the past is resurrected by new music.”
—Laura Wittner, Lugares donde una no está – Poemas 1996-2016
HAGAR BEFORE THE OCCUPATION
HAGAR AFTER THE OCCUPATION
A memoir-in-verse of the Iraq War
Poems by Amal al-Jubouri
Translations by Rebecca Gayle Howell
The Best Translated Book Award, finalist
Winner, Jules Chametzky Prize
The Banipal Translation Prize, finalist
Best Book by an Arab Woman, Book Riot
Best Book of Poetry, Library Journal
Critical praise from MINT, Asymptote,
New Pages, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and others
In spare, vivid, and poundingly heartfelt language, [al-Jubouri] shows us her country before the occupation by U.S. troops and afterward...these poems have a timeless, haunting quality, and they offer not just enormous pleasure but understanding.
— Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal starred review
“Rebecca Gayle Howell's translation is stunning in how it creates a powerful, contemporary voice speaking to us directly with warmth and suffering, and yet also carries over the poems' connection to Arabic literary traditions.”
— Jennifer Kronovet, Three Percent
“Howell, entrusting herself to al-Jubouri's vision, has written beautiful, moving, and passionate poems in English that try to welcome the stranger among us, letting the one our nation has called enemy speak in our own tongue.”
— Jeremy Paden, Asymptote
“Al-Jubouri’s blistering book of poetry, Hagar Before the Occupation, Hagar After the Occupation, recently nominated for a 2012 Best Translated Book of the Year award in the US, shows us how difficult and how vital it is to create poetry in disaster.”
—Supriya Nair, MINT
“The best of poetry paired with the best of translations [achieves an] immediate bridge between cultures. It is a double gift.”
— Debrah Lechner, Hayden's Ferry Review
“An average American reader may find Hagar Before the Occupation / Hagar After the Occupation a difficult read, even as translator Rebecca Gayle Howell takes great pains to ensure that few cultural and literary cues are lost in the conversion. But as with any difficulty based on unintended ignorance, it's well worth two or three readings—with one finger in the Notes and Wikipedia within arm's reach—in order to encourage a more sympathetic and full understanding for the citizens of Iraq.”
— Jeremy Benson, New Pages
“Amal al-Jubouri's poems are essentially about exile, exile from the country of her youth, exile from peace, from love, from normalcy, from hope. They are courageous, honest, bitter, and beautiful. They are as ghosts, wandering over the rivers, looking for a home. I want to ask forgiveness of these ghosts. And rock them to sleep. I bless the Iraqi dead, as she does.”
— Gerald Stern
“Poet and translator Rebecca Gayle Howell has transported Amal al-Jubouri's moving cri de coeur across the precarious bridge between Arabic and English as well as the cultural, political, and ethical chasm separating Iraq and the United States. This is poetry necessary to our times, and we owe the makers of this work in English an enormous debt of gratitude.”
— Carolyn Forché
“Through these poems, Amal al-Jubouri connects us to the earliest known poems, and yet the dialectic tension between them is utterly contemporary. Al-Jubouri writes “This is my protest, this is my folly,” yet these poems are neither simple protest nor in any sense folly. These poems are both essential and eternal.”
— Nick Flynn
“[Hagar Before the Occupation / Hagar After the Occupation] is the most exciting and original book of pure poetry I have read in a long time. The Iraqi poet Amal Al-Jubouri, beautifully translated by Rebecca Gayle Howell, will immediately take her place alongside Neruda and Tsvetaeva and Celan—poets of exile, yes, and poets of difficult truth.”
— Alicia Ostriker, from the foreword