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Peruvian Andean Poetry

Friday, April 17, 2015 - 4:00pm

Cohen Hall Terrace, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Peruvian Andean poet Odi Gonzales and translator Lynn Levin will offer bilingual readings and discuss Gonzeles' book Birds on the Kiswar Tree/La Escuela de Cusco (2Leaf Press, 2014). Gonzales will also read some poems written in Quechua. Marie Escalante will deliver the welcoming remarks and Américo Mendoza-Mori will moderate the discussion. 

The poems in Birds on the Kiswar Tree are based on church art painted by indigenous Quechua painters during Peru's colonial era. These multivocal poems are both syncretistic and subversive. They interweave the religious faith of the literary speakers with their ardent opposition to the Spanish conquest of the Inca empire. The poems capture the voices of the artists, the biblical figures in the paintings, a museum guide, Spanish clerics, the poet himself, and others.

Critical praise for Birds on the Kiswar Tree includes the following. From Ilan Stavans, editor of The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry:“ "A haunting gallery of indigenous painters from colonial Peru, most anonymous, is mapped out by Quechua poet Odi Gonzales in this admirable collection.” From Thalia Pandiri, editor-in-chief of the translation journal Metamorphoses: "“Powerful, stunningly beautiful, teeming with indigenous life like the paintings of the Quechua artists who appropriated and transformed the art and religion of their colonizers. Lynn Levin’'s translation captures the power and nuanced registers of Odi Gonzales'’s tour de force.”"

Biographies:

Odi Gonzales, born in Cusco, Peru, is one of the most important poets of his generation. He writes in both Quechua and Spanish. He is the author of a landmark study of a sixteenth-century Quechua poem lamenting the death of the Inca Atahualpa, Elegía Apu Inca Atawallpaman (Lima: Pakarina Editores, 2014). The author of seven poetry collections, Gonzales is the recipient of the Gold Medal of the City of Cusco, Peru's César Vallejo National Poetry Prize, and the Prize in Poetry from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Lima. Gonzales's work is represented in two of the newest and most prominent anthologies of Latin American poetry, The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry and The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry. He teaches Quechua language and culture and prehispanicliterature of the Andean region at New York University.

Lynn Levin, translator of Birds on the Kiswar Tree, is a poet, writer, and translator. She is the author of six books, including: Miss Plastique (Ragged Sky Press, 2013), a 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry; as co-author, Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets (Texture  Press, 2013), a 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in education/academic books; and Fair Creatures of an Hour (Loonfeather Press, 2009), a 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry. Lynn Levin's poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Boulevard, Washington Square Review, The Hopkins Review, Verse Daily, and on Garrison Keillor's radio show The Writer's Almanac. She teaches at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Please see the preview of Birds on the Kiswar Tree/La Escuela de Cusco available online.