Chintungo by Soledad Marambio and translated by K.T. Billey

This is poetry from Chile.

Chintungo by Soledad Marambio translated by K.T. Billey is published by Ugly Duckling Presse. This is a Book originally written in Spanish. This was published in 2017.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781946433084E12.

Soledad Marambio’s Chintungo, translated by K.T. Billey, is a Chilean book of place, return, and uneasy belonging. The title points toward a specific locality, but the poem’s work is not merely geographic. Place becomes a way of thinking about memory, class, speech, family, land, and the difficulty of arriving anywhere without bringing history along. Billey’s translation gives the English a measured, attentive quality, allowing the book’s local textures to remain present without reducing them to scenery. I like poetry that understands place as more than backdrop. A place can be an argument, a wound, a joke, a beloved, a pressure system. Chintungo seems to move in that awareness. It is a book for readers interested in contemporary Chilean poetry that feels grounded, reflective, and alert to the politics hidden inside the ordinary act of naming where one is from.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.