I’m excited to present the first installment of Action Books’ N O I S E M A K E R S, a new monthly series that recognizes poets, translators, and poet-translators whose recently published work pushes boundaries, goes too far, to far extremes: the out of sight. All pieces were nominated by Action Blog contributors – myself included. While there are a lot of ‘Best of’ anthologies and ‘End-of-the-Year’ lists out there, there’s still a noticeable lack of recognition for translators. I thought: why not curate something on a monthly basis that puts all of these voices in conversation? This monthly list aims to recognize 1) interlingual, sonically dynamic, genre-defying poems / poems-in-translation that resist the status quo and 2) celebrate the editors of journals and presses that continue to publish groundbreaking, high-risk poetry!
-Paul Cunningham
N O I S E M A K E R S – M A Y 2 0 2 0
“Hare Architecture“
by Ryan Bollenbach (Published by Snail Trail Press)
“Pre-Credit Sequence for the Film About Camp“
by Ken Chen (Published by Poem-a-Day)
“Mirror Words” from Sky Translation
by Don Mee Choi (Published by Goodmorning Menagerie)
“from Atlas“
by Alba Cid and translated by Jacob Rogers (Published by Asymptote)
“ACT 56” from SMUT-MAKER
by Mike Corrao (Published by Inside the Castle)
“GALAX II“
by Cynthia Cruz (Published by Jubilat)
“from Detachment“
by Mina Decu and translated by Anca Roncea and Raj Chakrapani (Published by Asymptote)
“(disambiguation of miriam)“
by Carolina Ebeid (Published by Poem-a-Day)
“First Forty Days” from Object Permanence
by Michelle Gil-Montero (Published by Ornithopter Press)
“Requiem for Toni Morrison“
by Harmony Holiday (Published by Poetry Magazine)
An excerpt from Sky-Quake: Tremor of Heaven
by Vicente Huidobro and translated by Ignacio Infante and Michael Leong (Excerpt from Asymptote; book from co-im-press)
“Reindeer on My Upper Lip” from Whale and Vapor
by Kim Kyung Ju and translated by Jake Levine (Published by Black Ocean)
“Blank Notes“
by Lee Young-ju and translated by Jae Kim (Published by Guernica)
“All I Can Have Are Field Recordings of the Field“
by Kristina Martino (Published by Poem-a-Day)
“from Elementary Poetry” | Elementary Poetry
by Andrei Monastyrski and translated by Brian Droitcour and Yelena Kalinsky (Excerpt from BOMB; book from Ugly Duckling Presse)
“from Flight and Metamorphosis“
by Nelly Sachs and translated by Joshua Weiner (Published by Poetry Magazine)
“Thirty-Four” from Night in the North
by Fabián Severo and translated by Jesse Lee Kercheval, Laura Cesarco Eglin (Published by Eulalia Books)
“Months Nine Through Eleven: Time-Work and Oral Eroticism“
by Philip Sorenson (Published by DREGINALD)
“House of Bees“
by Natalia Toledo and translated by Clare Sullivan and Irma Pineda (Published by Asymptote)
“Two Pieces“
by Leia Penina Wilson (Published by Burning House Press)