Blog / Interviews

Shaping a Style

January 31, 2023 - By Peter R. Bush, with Albert Lloret

An Interview with Peter Bush, translator, by Albert Lloret:

You have recently published an English translation of Víctor Català's novel A Film (3,000 meters) with Open Letter Press. What kind of a novel is it? Does it belong to any genre?

No, it playfully skates between genres. In her prologue, Víctor Català refers to her book as a light-hearted movie the reader doesn’t have to take seriously. She even says the reader doesn’t even need to connect the threads of the plot. The orphan protagonist’s agitated quest for his parents means, on the contrary, that the reader is always trying to see how the rapid sequence of events...

10 Questions for Jodie Noel Vinson

January 24, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

Six months before your trip, you begin the search. Scrolling through headshots, you note several eligible prospects. One after the other, you dial the numner below each photo.

The first seven receptionists inform you that, contrary to the green check mark on your insurance's provider list, the doctor isn't taking new clients. A few seem upset that you would ask.
—from "Patient, Heal Thyself," Volume 63, Issue 4 (Winter 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Not the first I wrote, but one of the first I published, “To Know A Bean,” comes to mind because a reader recently reached out to let me know they’d come across it in The Concord Saunterer. The essay is about a literary...

10 Questions for Rosebud Ben-Oni

January 19, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

Only death::orse is real. Only forward is unhorse

            & the little graces & galactic undeeds—& you

                         can't slick     nor kick to spur(n)

                                         a :: direhorse ::can never own a force
—from "\DEAT {H :: O R S E} \\\," Vol. 63, Issue 4 (Winter 2022)...

10 Questions for Salma Harland

January 17, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

If only I could refrain from eating,
the route to corruption and folly.
I never deprive a mother of her sucklings
or have a share of a calf's milk
—from "If Only I Could Refrain from Eating" by Abū Al-'Alā' al-Ma'arrī, Translated by Salma Harland, Volume 63, Issue 4 (Winter 2022)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
I probably first attempted to translate poetry around the age of 15, when I was in high school. I fell under the spell of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry, how the existential meets the sublime in his writings and how he reads both as a Palestinian and international poet. So I tried to translate parts of his Mural (Jidārīyah) into English. A few years...

10 Questions for Claire Denson

January 12, 2023 - By Edward Clifford

I like to play with animals, to see
what their bodies do when twisted
and probed. I like the sounds they make.
I grab a toad by the throat and move it
into an O as in Open wide, love.
—from "The Chimp Speaks of Cruelty," Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote. 
When I first started writing poems in college, the process overtook me. It was like I had denied myself a serious go at this form of expression, and when I finally allowed it, I filled notebooks, was kept up at night, distracted, needed to write like it was a tic. Some of that early work is in University of Michigan lit journal online archives.

One early influence in particular was poet Scott...