Helene Cardona's Blog - Posts Tagged "exile"

Birnam Wood is a spell-binding, spell-bound book. José Manuel Cardona was one of many Spanish intellectuals exiled by the Franco government, and the poems reflect the anguish and longings of the exile, embodied most powerfully in the figure of Odysseus.
— Sidney Wade, The Los Angeles Review
http://losangelesreview.org/review-bi...

Birnam Wood (José Manuel Cardona translation, Salmon Poetry) wins the 2022 Independent Press Award!
Thank you #IndependentPressAward #2022IPA #GabbyBookAwards

"We arrived and the miracle happened.
It was the sea and the wind in the bells.
We came from far, from years
Thirsty as dust, from humble
fishermen’s nets on barren shore."
—José Manuel Cardona

The human condition, exile, love and death, freedom and fate, renunciation and resignation, the homeland of Ibiza and the diaspora are themes dominating Birnam Wood. A very clear thematic unity is discernible in the work of José Manuel Cardona: an unflinching look at identity through heightened language. These poems form part of a major on-going tradition in Spanish poetry. His work is marked by a predilection for the classical Castilian hendecasyllable as well as free verse, and by a strong interest in social themes.
The book reflects a social conscience and expresses great pain and love, in particular the poet’s love for his native island of Ibiza. It is also filled with literary influences. Its title, El bosque de Birnam, is a metaphor drawn from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Birnam Wood speaks against abuse of power and for overthrowing all illegitimate governments. Lady Macbeth is foretold that she will have cause for worry when the Birnam Wood rises and marches against her, yet she does not heed the warning. Franco’s rise to power after a military coup launched a Civil War against a republic democratically elected in peace. Birnam Wood stands for resistance to illegitimate and illegal regimes.

Birnam Wood (José Manuel Cardona translation, Salmon Poetry) wins the 2022 NYC Big Book Award! Thank you #GabbyBookAwards

Probably the best poetry collection I’ve read all year! A passionate collection. Gorgeous! —Bonnie Hearn Hill’s Great Day Book Club’s Book of the Month

The human condition, exile, love and death, freedom and fate, renunciation and resignation, the homeland of Ibiza and the diaspora are themes dominating Birnam Wood. A very clear thematic unity is discernible in the work of José Manuel Cardona: an unflinching look at identity through heightened language. These poems form part of a major on-going tradition in Spanish poetry. His work is marked by a predilection for the classical Castilian hendecasyllable as well as free verse, and by a strong interest in social themes.
The book reflects a social conscience and expresses great pain and love, in particular the poet’s love for his native island of Ibiza. It is also filled with literary influences. Its title, El bosque de Birnam, is a metaphor drawn from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Birnam Wood speaks against abuse of power and for overthrowing all illegitimate governments. Lady Macbeth is foretold that she will have cause for worry when the Birnam Wood rises and marches against her, yet she does not heed the warning. Franco’s rise to power after a military coup launched a Civil War against a republic democratically elected in peace. Birnam Wood stands for resistance to illegitimate and illegal regimes.

I'd delighted to share that The Abduction, my translation of Maram Al-Masri's Le Rapt, won an Albertine and FACE Foundation Grant from Villa Albertine.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Using artfully spare language and repetition, Maram Al-Masri takes us deep into the emotional
complexities of losing her young child to a patriarchal society. Hélène Cardona’s deft translations capture both the stark immediacy and haunting music of these moving poems, almost letting us believe they were written in English.
—Martha Collins, author of Casualty Reports and Because What Else Could I Do, winner of the
Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

With a tender eloquence that equals the French original, Hélène Cardona brings into English a
harrowing tale, The Abduction by Maram Al-Masri, of a new mother devastated by the abduction of her son, kidnapped by his father to be raised in Syria. Now, as the distraught mother powerfully notes, “war rages within me.” Cardona vividly conveys both palpable love and the wisdom learned from tragic loss: “To love, it is to prepare yourself / to be abandoned.” As The Abduction proves, Hélène Cardona is a translator who has the exquisite sensitivity and erudition
that this brave, vulnerable work deserves.
—Cynthia Hogue, winner of the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy
of American Poets, author of In June the Labyrinth
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

The Abduction won an Albertine and FACE Foundation Grant.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Each small stanza of The Abduction picks at the torn seam between parent and child. As the narrator peers “out a window/ I haven’t cleaned for a long time,” we also see what has been snatched away. Arabic poet Al-Masri writes of the changed shape of her future, a devastation eloquently translated by Hélène Cardona.
—Lauren Camp, 2022 to 2025 New Mexico Poet Laureate and author of Took House
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Maram Al-Masri’s Le Rapt, as translated by Hélène Cardona, opens with the simple delights of a mother engaging with her young child, speaking to him as if he is a confidant. “He is occupied / making his ten fingers move / to convince me that love is the natural fruit / of the tree of life,” she writes, and what could be more wonderful than that? Bliss, however, is followed by unbearable grief, when her child is abducted and separated from her for years by her then-husband. The poems become the vessel for her dialogue with her missing child, and with her sorrow. Even when mother and child experience a complex reunion years later, each has learned to fear loving the other, and her son must face a second infancy, this time as an immigrant, much less blissful than the first. As a reader of poetry, I am compelled by the raw spareness of these poems, their keen honesty, and their refusal to provide us with a restoration arc. As a parent, I feel empathy, and awe at Al-Masri’s survival.

—Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

I'd thrilled to share that The Abduction, my translation of Maram Al-Masri's Le Rapt, won an Albertine and FACE Foundation Grant from Villa Albertine.
Using artfully spare language and repetition, Maram Al-Masri takes us deep into the emotional
complexities of losing her young child to a patriarchal society. Hélène Cardona’s deft translations capture both the stark immediacy and haunting music of these moving poems, almost letting us believe they were written in English.
—Martha Collins, author of Casualty Reports and Because What Else Could I Do, winner of the
Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award

With a tender eloquence that equals the French original, Hélène Cardona brings into English a
harrowing tale, her son, kidnapped by his father to be raised in Syria. Now, as the distraught mother powerfully notes, “war rages within me.” Cardona vividly conveys both palpable love and the wisdom learned from tragic loss: “To love, it is to prepare yourself / to be abandoned.” As The Abduction proves, Hélène Cardona is a translator who has the exquisite sensitivity and erudition
that this brave, vulnerable work deserves.
—Cynthia Hogue, winner of the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy
of American Poets, author of In June the Labyrinth

I'd thrilled to share that The Abduction, my translation of Maram Al-Masri's Le Rapt, won an Albertine and FACE Foundation Grant from Villa Albertine.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Using artfully spare language and repetition, Maram Al-Masri takes us deep into the emotional
complexities of losing her young child to a patriarchal society. Hélène Cardona’s deft translations capture both the stark immediacy and haunting music of these moving poems, almost letting us believe they were written in English.
—Martha Collins, author of Casualty Reports and Because What Else Could I Do, winner of the
Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award

With a tender eloquence that equals the French original, Hélène Cardona brings into English a
harrowing tale, her son, kidnapped by his father to be raised in Syria. Now, as the distraught mother powerfully notes, “war rages within me.” Cardona vividly conveys both palpable love and the wisdom learned from tragic loss: “To love, it is to prepare yourself / to be abandoned.” As The Abduction proves, Hélène Cardona is a translator who has the exquisite sensitivity and erudition
that this brave, vulnerable work deserves.
—Cynthia Hogue, winner of the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy
of American Poets, author of In June the Labyrinth
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Check out the book trailer for The Abduction, my translation of Maram Al Masri's Le Rapt!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jAnY...
"where the sky is made of tales
and where the trees are poems
I will take my little one for a walk."

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...



Thank you Gloria Mindock for the beautiful book trailer😘

Celebrate Mother's Day with The Abduction, the story of a mother who reunites with her son after 13 years.
The Abduction
Winner of an Albertine and FACE Foundation Grant from Villa Albertine.
"Hélène Cardona's deft translations capture both the stark immediacy and haunting music of these moving poems, almost letting us believe they were written in English."
—Martha Collins, author of Casualty Reports
"Maram Al-Masri's Le Rapt, as translated by Hélène Cardona, opens with the simple delights of a mother engaging with her young child, speaking to him as if he is a confidant. "He is occupied / making his ten fingers move / to convince me that love is the natural fruit / of the tree of life," she writes, and what could be more wonderful than that? Bliss, however, is followed by unbearable grief, when her child is abducted and separated from her for years by her then husband.
The poems become the vessel for her dialogue with her missing child, and with her sorrow. Even when mother and child experience a complex reunion years later, each has learned to fear loving the other, and her son must face a second infancy, this time as an immigrant, much less blissful than the first. As a reader of poetry, I am compelled by the raw spareness of these poems, their keen honesty, and their refusal to provide us with a restoration arc. As a parent, I feel empathy, and awe at Al-Masri's survival."
—Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

So happy! The Abduction received a Readers Favorite's 5 Starred Review:
https://readersfavorite.com/book-revi...
If anyone would like a signed copy, please DM me! 😘
Huge thanks to Luwi Nyakansaila and Readers Favorite 🥰