Pregnancy
she was pregnant
in that photo
the child
was never
born
the photo
keeps us
waiting.
Square
N. sing. feminine
the mathematics of the streets
and their perpendicular corners
and parallel sidewalks
with imperceptible imperfections
and blocks in rectangles
that end up in circular squares
where cars rush by at 40 miles per hour
along with busy people
and where people sit down
frittering away time and silences
on indifferent pigeons.
On absence
her absence
can be soothed
by the photograph
even though I insist
on touching her
thick hair
and all I can get is
the smooth texture
of special paper
and all I can manage
is to stain the image
with my fingerprints
and I struggle
to hear
her roaring
laughter
it’s still better than
memory alone
Three Poems
Ana Elisa Ribeiro
translated from the Portuguese by Anita Di Marco
The original poems correlating to “Pregnancy” and “Absence” are taken from Album, published by Relicário in 2018, while that of “Square” first appeared in Dicionário de Imprecisões [Dictionary of Imprecisions], published by Impressões de Minas in 2019.
Read the original in Portuguese
Listen to "Pregnancy" read in the original Portuguese by the poet:
Ana Elisa Ribeiro is one of Brazil’s leading writers and poets of the new generation, with a prolific output in a wide variety of styles. An enthusiast of the Portuguese language, advocate for distinct ways of speaking and a great supporter of both students and authors, she enthralls us with her knowledge and love for her careers in linguistics, writing and teaching as well as her refined humor. She also has a knack for expressing a distinctly Minas Gerais way of being. Thanks to her usual economy of language and sensitivity, her poems always leave room for readers’ interpretation, but are difficult to decode. That is why translating them can be a pleasant but ambiguous task. It seems easy at first, but gradually one notices there is always something else to uncover, linked to countless layers of culture and tradition from her mother tongue and country.
At the same time, her poetry is marked by informality and simplicity, which makes translation an even more thought-provoking job. In addition to her conciseness, other challenges arise from vocabulary, pronouns, use of lowercase letters in several lines, and lack of traditional punctuation. All this turns translating her poems into a thorny task, for one has to respect the target language and its rules. In the poem “Prenhez”, for example, the title in Portuguese denotes an animal pregnancy, but we used “Pregnancy” in English, which maintains the sonic and etymological link between the languages, but expands the context to the human. The first sentence also has a hidden subject (I or she), which is normal in Portuguese, though not in English. We chose to keep the mystery by rendering it as a less autobiographical poem, choosing the subject “she”. Likewise, the last line photo keeps us waiting fits nicely, since it maintains the author’s simplicity, leaving room for readers’ inference.
The translator would like to acknowledge the help of Alison Entrekin and Nicole Soek in editing the work.
At the same time, her poetry is marked by informality and simplicity, which makes translation an even more thought-provoking job. In addition to her conciseness, other challenges arise from vocabulary, pronouns, use of lowercase letters in several lines, and lack of traditional punctuation. All this turns translating her poems into a thorny task, for one has to respect the target language and its rules. In the poem “Prenhez”, for example, the title in Portuguese denotes an animal pregnancy, but we used “Pregnancy” in English, which maintains the sonic and etymological link between the languages, but expands the context to the human. The first sentence also has a hidden subject (I or she), which is normal in Portuguese, though not in English. We chose to keep the mystery by rendering it as a less autobiographical poem, choosing the subject “she”. Likewise, the last line photo keeps us waiting fits nicely, since it maintains the author’s simplicity, leaving room for readers’ inference.
The translator would like to acknowledge the help of Alison Entrekin and Nicole Soek in editing the work.
Ana Elisa Ribeiro was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1975. She has been writing poetry since 1997. She is the author of Anzol de pescar infernos (Hell Fishing Hook; São Paulo, Patuá, 2013), which was shortlisted for the Portugal Telecom Award; Álbum (Album; Belo Horizonte, Relicário, 2018) which won the Manaus Award; Dicionário de Imprecisões (Dictionary of Inaccuracies; Belo Horizonte, Impressões de Minas, 2019), which was shortlisted for the Jabuti Prize in 2020; and Romieta e Julieu (Romiet and Julieo; Illustrations: Marcelo Drummond and Marconi Drummond; Belo Horizonte, RHJ, 2021). She was an editor of the Leve um Livro collection, which disseminated contemporary poetry in Belo Horizonte between 2015 and 2017 via free poetry booklets. She is also an editor of the series Biblioteca Madrinha Lua (Peirópolis), which only publishes contemporary women writers. She has participated in literary events in Brazil, Colombia, Cuba and France, published in anthologies in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French and has a PhD in linguistics from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). She is a professor at the Federal Center for Technological Education of Minas Gerais (CEFET-MG).
Anita Di Marco is from São Paulo but lives in Minas Gerais. She majored in architecture from the School of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Sao Paulo (FAU-USP), has graduate certificates in architectural conservation from the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM, in Rome) and translation from the DBB Curso de Tradução, Rio de Janeiro. She works as a translator, writer and proofreader. She has co-authored three books, for she believes teamwork is always better, and has translated over forty titles in architecture, urbanism and similar areas. After attending workshops with the translator Alison Entrekin, she fell in love with literary translation and poetry and was part of the group guided by Entrekin that came third in the Stephen Spender Poetry Prize (UK) in 2023. She was awarded the Gentileza Urbana Prize by the Brazilian Institute of Architects, Minas Gerais, in 2011 for the conception and curatorship of the exhibition Nosso Patrimônio vai às Escolas. She was longlisted for the Jabuti Prize in translation in 2022 and, in 2023, her blog Anita Plural was shortlisted for the Prêmio Somos Cidade. This is her first foray into translating poetry alone.
