TRANSLATION

In Peñate’s poetry, the body-self is engaged with, and affected by, the landscape, the weather, and the spirits. Tones shift from declaration to plea, tentative to self-assured. The territory, internal and external, is vast. Peñate constructs and claims spaces in the world, as a poet and a woman. As translators of her poetry, we dwelled in these image-rich places and worked to re-create them in English, so more readers might do the same.

—excerpted from “Translating Ch’ol: A Bridge between Linguistics and Poetry” by Carol Rose Little and Charlotte Friedman, World Literature Today (March 2022)

A Selection of Translated Poetry:

Juana Peñate Montejo translated by Carol Rose Little and Charlotte Friedman - Translator’s Note - Dance of the Rain - Dragonflies Hayden’s Ferry Review (print - April 2023)

Poems by Juana Peñate Montejo: Sacred Sun; My Language I,II,III; Poetry’s Silence; X’Askun On the Seawall (February 2023)

Seven Poems, Juana Penate Montejo Asymptote (January 2023)

Three Poems from Chiapas: I Am the Alphabet; When I Wake; This Land, Your World World Literature Today

Translating Ch'ol: A Bridge between Linguistics and Poetry World Literature Today

A Conversation with Ch'ol Poet Juana Peñate Montejo World Literature Today

I Am the Night The Arkansas International

The Earth's Gift The Arkansas International

Seven Poems by Juana Penate Montejo: Ichtyeja, Ancestors, Distance, Freshwater Spring, I Refuse, Evidence, Dreaming Undocumented Exchanges: University of Iowa Journal of Literary Translation

Translator's Note Exchanges: University of Iowa Journal of Literary Translation

Poems by Peñate Montejo: First Voice, Tatuch, Heart of a River, Footprints North Dakota Quarterly

Coffee, Xixik II, Your Birth Journal of Critical Latina Feminism

Five Poems: Chajk, X-ixik, Glimmerings, Healer, Poetry's Lightning Latin American Literature Today