Theophylline
A Poetic Migration via the Modernisms of Rukeyser, Bishop, Grimké (de Castro, Vallejo)
What is breath for? What is archive? Why write a poem, instead of... something else?
Theophylline is a work of poetry motivated by asthma, seeking poetry’s futurity in a queer and female heritage. Moure crosses a border to engage the poetry of three American modernists—Muriel Rukeyser, Elizabeth Bishop, and Angelina Weld Grimké—as a translator might enter work to translate it. But what if that work is already in English?
Moure listens to rhythms, punctuation, conditions of production and reception, and finds migration patterns, queeritude, mother mimory, wars, silence, constraints on breath, and social bias played out in terms of race and/or class. Moving from present to past to a future in the unwritten; querying borders, jarred by intrusions from alter ego Elisa Sampedrín, Theophylline finishes with poems informed by pandemic walks and human aging that include two translations: from Rosalía de Castro, pre-modernist poet who wrote in Galician calling on women to speak, and from César Vallejo, the twentieth century Peruvian whose poetics shattered the colonial (Spanish) tongue.
What is breath for? What is archive? Why write a poem, instead of... something else?
Theophylline is a work of poetry motivated by asthma, seeking poetry’s futurity in a queer and female heritage. Moure crosses a border to engage the poetry of three American modernists—Muriel Rukeyser, Elizabeth Bishop, and Angelina Weld Grimké—as a translator might enter work to translate it. But what if that work is already in English?
Moure listens to rhythms, punctuation, conditions of production and reception, and finds migration patterns, queeritude, mother mimory, wars, silence, constraints on breath, and social bias played out in terms of race and/or class. Moving from present to past to a future in the unwritten; querying borders, jarred by intrusions from alter ego Elisa Sampedrín, Theophylline finishes with poems informed by pandemic walks and human aging that include two translations: from Rosalía de Castro, pre-modernist poet who wrote in Galician calling on women to speak, and from César Vallejo, the twentieth century Peruvian whose poetics shattered the colonial (Spanish) tongue.
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — Aug 8, 2023 |
| Specifications | 176 pages | 6 in x 9 in |
| Keywords | chronic illness; covid; air quality; global warming; environmentalism; feminism; canadian literature; canadian poetry; books in translation; |
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Supporting Resources
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Excerpt |
| Written By |
ERÍN MOURE is a poet and translator (primarily of Galician and French poetry into English) who welcomes texts that are unconventional or difficult because she loves and needs them. Among other honours, she is a two-time winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Award (in poetry and translation), a winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Nelson Ball Prize, a co-recipient of the QWF Spoken Word Prize, a three-time finalist for a Best Translated Book Award in poetry, and a three-time finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She is based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. |
| Written By |
ELISA SAMPEDRÍN is undependable. Her presence, like that of the shoe, worries the book. |
| Written By |
|
ERÍN MOURE is a poet and translator (primarily of Galician and French poetry into English) who welcomes texts that are unconventional or difficult because she loves and needs them. Among other honours, she is a two-time winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Award (in poetry and translation), a winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Nelson Ball Prize, a co-recipient of the QWF Spoken Word Prize, a three-time finalist for a Best Translated Book Award in poetry, and a three-time finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She is based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. |
| Written By |
|
ELISA SAMPEDRÍN is undependable. Her presence, like that of the shoe, worries the book. |
In Theophylline, the poet’s interaction with Rukeyser, Bishop, and Grimké is itself a translation ... Moure works to sensitively resuscitate erased histories.
” —Poetry FoundationGenerous in its generation of shared meaning and multiple voices … Theophylline breathes on and through each turning page, as it migrates across multiple thresholds. As [Moure] fits herself into the shoes of others and otherness, she walks the walk and talks the talk of postmodern poetry and translation.”
” —Miramichi Reader