Rachel Galvin
Photo by Nick Barberio
Bio
Rachel Galvin is a poet, translator, and scholar. Her books include two collections of poetry, Elevated Threat Level, a finalist for the National Poetry Series, and Pulleys & Locomotion; a work of criticism, News of War: Civilian Poetry 1936-1945; Hitting the Streets, a translation from the French of Raymond Queneau, which won the 2014 Scott Moncrieff Prize for Translation; and a co-translation (with Harris Feinsod) of Decals: Complete Early Poetry of Oliverio Girondo, a finalist for the 2019 National Translation Award. Her translation of Cowboy & Other Poems, a chapbook by Alejandro Albarrán Polanco, was published in December 2019 by Ugly Duckling Presse. Her work appears in Best American Experimental Writing 2020, Best American Poetry 2020, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Fence, Gulf Coast, McSweeney’s, Narrative, the Nation, the New Yorker, PN Review, and Poetry. She is associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Chicago.
Project Description
To support the translation from the Spanish of Selected Poems of Alejandro Albarrán Polanco. Despite his young age, Albarrán Polanco (b. 1985) has already published four collections of poetry and garnered several awards, including the 2018 International Manuel Acuña Prize in Spanish. His poetry offers snapshots of historical moments and is infused with lyricism and rhythm. Steeped in contemporary Mexican life, some topics he covers are the ravages of globalization and violence on both national and intimate levels. This selection will draw from all four of Albarrán's books and will be his work's first book-length appearance in English.
Translation is a crucial medium for conversation and exchange, for traversing distances and cultivating connections. Since I began collaborating with Alejandro Albarrán Polanco in 2016, it has felt especially urgent to keep those conversations open, and to find ways to extend new connections through art. To ally with one another, to unite, to band together, to yoke together forms of making and forms of imagining. It’s exciting for me to work with a living author, an innovative young poet whose art is growing and expanding across media, and with whom I share creative affinities. I am deeply interested in how poetry engages with news, as Albarrán Polanco’s does, and how poetry can serve as a first draft of history, which is something I explore in my own poems (Elevated Threat Level), as well as in my scholarly work (News of War: Civilian Poetry 1936-1945).
Literary translation is often overlooked, and translators go unseen. I am deeply grateful to the National Endowment for the Arts for recognizing my work, which feels enormously meaningful and fortifying, particularly by such a distinguished agency with its long, resolute tradition of supporting literature. Boundless gratitude to the National Endowment for the Arts for investing in and furthering the art of translation, and for advocating for translation as creative making.