Translation of the Route: Traducción de la Ruta

In poems that are precise, frank and finely tuned, award-winning Argentine poet Laura Wittner explores the specificities of parental and familial love, life after marriage, and the re-ignition of the self in middle age.

The ’things’ of life - bus journeys, potted plants, thunder at night, coffee-stained books, fleeting conversations and the rest - are made full through Wittner’s ability to pinpoint in them the consequential, and even the metaphysical, manipulating language with a translator’s delicate skill. There are funny, moving pen-portraits of Wittner’s two children, suddenly grown, as well as bell-clear descriptions of the task of writing. For this is also a collection about language itself - as an interface, as a surface, and as vital communication.

Translation of the Route is Laura Wittner’s eleventh collection. The poems in this dual language Spanish-English edition, Wittner’s first collection available in English translation, have been translated by the Mexican-Scottish bilingual poet and translator Juana Adcock, acclaimed author of Manca and Split.

Laura Wittner is an award-winning poet and translator from Argentina. Her books of poetry include El pasillo del tren (1996), Los cosacos (1998), Las últimas mudanzas (2001), La tomadora de café (2005), Lluvias (2009), Balbuceos en una misma dirección (2011), La altura (2016), Lugares donde una no está (2017) and Traducción de la ruta (2020). She has also published more than 20 books for children, most recently Cual para tal (2022), ¿Y comieron perdices? (2023) and Se pide un deseo (2023). Translation of the Route, Juana Adcock’s translation of Traducción de la ruta is published by the Poetry Translation Centre with Bloodaxe Books in a dual language Spanish-English edition in 2024. As a literary translator Wittner has translated books by Leonard Cohen, David Markson, M. John Harrison, Cynan Jones, Claire-Louise Bennett, Katherine Mansfield and James Schuyler, among many others. She lives in Buenos Aires.

Juana Adcock is a Mexican poet, translator and editor based in Scotland. She is the author of Manca (Tierra Adentro, 2014), Vestigial (Stewed Rhubarb, 2022) and Split (Blue Diode, 2019), which was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was included in the Guardian’s Best Poetry of 2019. She is co-editor of the anthology of poetry by Latin American women Temporary Archives (Arc Publications, 2022), and her translation of the Mè’phàà poet Hubert Matiúwàa’s The Dogs Dreamt (Flipped Eye, 2023) received a PEN Translates award.