 It was initially conceived as a closing event, meaning an event at which people compare notes and talk to each other a little bit more and have some refreshments and I don't know, network exchange cards, say let's do lunch, and also we have some local programming to celebrate the place where we are. The idea was in fact that to counter the long-standing, sometime tradition of just sort of hibernating in the hotel for a few days and then not seeing too much of the community. So we decided to put together some local programming and I was especially pleased that at the end of the RFP process, we had a few possible places we were going to go, we ended up coming to Milwaukee because as a result of the Milwaukee selection, I got to see one of my favorite former students from the University of Iowa, now a faculty member at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who is this year's conference organizer. Give it up for Lea Leone. One of my favorite things about this conference is how we left the building and we had our readings at the public library. We brought Alta to the public and now we're bringing some of the public here to Alta. The readers that we're having tonight are local writers here in Milwaukee and it's really exciting to have them here. We have three readers that will be joining us. The first are Meg Newton and Kimberley, Blazer, who are both English professors at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and I'll just tell you a little bit about them. Poet, photographer and essayist Kimberley Blazer is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her publications include three books of poetry, Trailing You, winner of the first book from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas, Absentee Indians and Other Poems and Apprentice to Justice. Blazer's writing has been widely anthologized, most recently in the Heath Anthology of American Literature and her poetry has also been translated into several languages including Spanish, Norwegian, Indonesian and French. A Vashti Nabi ancestry and an enrolled member in the Minnesota Chippewa tribe, Blazer grew up on the White Earth Reservation in Northwestern Minnesota and much of her writing arises from her embedding in this culture in place. Therefore the collection with Meg Newton to bring her poems fully home to Ashwinabinon has been particularly welcome. The first of these translations was published in a recent issue of Hayden's Fairy Review. Our other reader is Margaret Newton, who is a poet and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of Bawajimo, A Dialect of Dreams in Ashwinabi Language and Literature and When We, a collection of bilingual poems in Ojibwe and English. Her poems and essays have been anthologized and published in Singh Poetry from the Indigenous Americas, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Walter Stone Review, and Cream City Review. She sings with Miskwa Wasing Na Gamoji, the swamp singers, a women's hand drum group whose lyrics are all in Ashwinabinon and hosts a network of web resources for learning Ashwinabinon. So we'll walk them them up. We're going to have three series of readers tonight. So we'll have some readings, take a break, get some more food, another drink, and we'll have some more readings like that. So thank you. Good evening, Bushu. Ani, it's the same way, we speak the same language and there's multiple ways to greet folks, so you just heard both. So I'm Kim Blazer and we are going to do two sets of poems. Meg and I are both poets and we're going to read, I'm going to read mine first, that Meg has graciously translated for me. We're going to talk a little bit about how those translations took place and then we're going to read some of her poems and maybe you could talk a little bit about the way that these are conceived and the translations are different. So one of the things that we thought would be interesting to share with folks here is the fact that because an Ashwinabinon is a language that is still being revitalized, it has nearly been lost in the Great Lakes area, in Wisconsin it's estimated that there's maybe about 20 speakers left that are first language speakers of the language and we have one school that is an immersion school right now, but it's a language that's very much in danger and we are trying to bring it back and so there's different ways to approach it. So Kim writes her poems in English and then what I did was try very very faithfully, being true to every single line, to match the meaning. Not worrying as much about am I maximizing every little sound and choosing every word that might have the most poetic potential, whereas my poems are the reverse where I write them in an Ashwinabinon and I write them for how they sound in an Ashwinabinon and then I provide an English translation so that my poems always feel to me a little more alive in an Ashwinabinon and then the English is the reverse where the translation is merely matching so that you can get the meaning from them. So it's a little bit different. You get to hear two sides of how we're bringing the language back. I think the other thing that's worth saying since you all came to Minnowa King, so Milwaukee isn't an Ashwinabinon word. It means good earth and Wisconsin means red stones. So in fact if you even booked your flight and showed up in this city you're already speaking in an Ashwinabinon for which we thank you. Okay and even within the four poems of mine that we're going to read the process was a little bit different so Meg was doing some work with a publication and she worked with three poems where she primarily simply elicited the poems and did the translations and then the very last one I'm going to read we did some collaborative back and forth talking about what this might mean, how it might symbolize something and how could that go forward in both languages. So we're going to start with dreams of water bodies which is Nibi, we are one, but what an un. Wojewsk, small, whiskered swimmer, you a fluid arrow crossing waterways with a simple determination of one who has dived purple deep into the mythic quest. Wojewsk, agachin, memishonowe buggazot, biwok dgomagadion, mashkawindaman, gogi washkawaniyamban, demi minandek gagwadiyambam, belittled or despised as water rat on land, hero of our Anishinaabe people and animal tales, creation stories whose tellers open slowly, magically, like within a dream, your tiny clenched fists so all water tribes might believe. Gopazomigok, nini chewabganuji aking, ogichida Anishinaabe, awesiyana jamoing, adesokan, dash, debajamojik, onisakananawa, nengach, enjimamangiriang, gedobikwani djens, mi dash, kina, nishinaabe, debweandemowat. See the small grains of sand, only these poor few, but they become our turtle island, this good and well-dreamed land where we stand in this moment on the edge of so many bodies of water and watch Wojewsk, our brother, slip through pools and streams and lakes, this marshland earth hallowed by the memory, the telling, the hope, the dive of sleek, whiskered swimmers who mark a dark path. And sometimes in our watery dreams, we pitiful land dwellers in longing recall and singing make spirits ready to follow, bakobi. Okay, so we should have probably said prior to that Wojewsk is the story that that poem is based off is a creation story and it is about finding our turtle earth. The next poem is based upon the jingle dress, which is a dress for powwows, and if you were to see it laid out on the page, you would see that it is also a physical poem where the language actually mirrors the shape of a jingle. In this one, because the shape was one side off another, we're going to try to do line by line. And that seemed because Meg was able to follow the shape of this in her translation. Jingles you made for Bill Antel. Cut from tobacco tins, snuff lids and coffee cans, bent round and pounded, silver cones tinkle, against red, jingle one against another, as I dance in the June sun, place my feet just so, finding the rhythm of the drums, as each tiny metal symbol clinks in time, dangling from the ribbons on my fond brown dress they swing and jingle at my step silver cylinders singing and my moccasins tap in and down move evenly around the arena to the song circling and again now beneath my hair sweat trickles as passing the stand I glance up catch your eye the twinkle there so much like a sound we made together a hope and then the third one is a butterfly poem I think I'm loud enough behind you this cocoon fluttering against my palm pollened wings as I dance quick life pulsing in my hand a feather tickle answered by my flying heart my child's glee my hand's impulsive frantic opening too soon you fly again encircling you cocoon spun of flesh winged by rations surprise me again tingling a child of secrets must not tell I ask forgive me and give me leave share this portion of butterfly life let me tap your joy break out for a moment with wings we fly two, butterflies ride my thoughts three, butterflies have lighted affix themselves like pinions to my left shoulder I am wind struck with awe butterfly has my life glowed sweet as yours that you have come to feel human flutter in this gift or enchantment I am captured seek not to win release held fast by butterfly feet my heart has my life glowed sweet as yours that you have come to feel human flutter I have come to feel human flutter I have come to feel human flutter I am a fly Moon, take flight. Ma, John. No ne moudere se. Ma jisun babamisun. OK, and the last one of my poems is not to bring you down, but it is a poem about death and about understanding of death or trying to and what we can do in our place as we find ourselves now. Afterwards, because the smallness of our being is our only greatness, because one night I was in a room listening until only one heart beat, because in these last years, I've worn and worn and nearly worn out my black funeral shoes, because the gesture of afterwards means the same thing no matter who speaks them, because faith, belief, forever are only words, no matter, because matter disappears always and eventually, because action is not matter, but energy that's spent changes being. And if death too is a change of being, perhaps, action counts. And if death is a land of unknowing, perhaps we do well to live with uncertainty. And if death is a forested land, it would be good to learn trees. And if death is a kingdom, it would be good to practice service. And if death is a foreign state, we should loosen allegiance to this one. And if the soul leaves our body, then we must rehearse goodbye. The thing you should know, so one is, we've never done this before, so it's really interesting. It's thank you for asking us to do this, because A, I don't know that we've ever had translation groups kind of take seriously our language and hear it. So for us to hear our language in this venue is wonderful. It's also, when it becomes performative, I find that I have to follow the music of what she's saying, not just her words. So thank you for pushing me to do that, because before I was just writing what she said. Now I had to hear it and then try to read it as well as you, which was hard. But I hope it worked. Now, so these are short. So now we have some, Meg has some poems that are very much shorter than mine. I tend to be long-winded. And she's going to read the Anishinaabemowin first, and I'll follow that with the English. So you'll get the opposite taste of how that works. So hopefully in these, what you'll hear is that because they were written Anishinaabemowin first, you should hear some play of both the phonemes and the morphemes and the language in just sort of a different way. So I also have a poem that starts out about a muskrat. But because in our language muskrats live near swamps and mushrooms, those words are in there and you hear how those words are similar. So I'll read it first and then you can read the English. Wajashkok, wajashkuidonsing. Enjibagone aga zikka wok, akak janzhe wok, o jachchaka yinsak. Anishinaabemowat. Okanwan gikken manamanik. Ga'e o jibkan gibozot. Megwa minikwe ang masgawabo. Zinzibakwarabo giewendemak. Mi bagadendegozian. Jinnimiang wajashkuidonsing. Muskrats in mushrooms. In the hole where they hide their little gray souls, they sing in anishinaabemowin. Our cousins' bones with the roots are roasting while we drink the swamp water syrup you have all forgotten. So we are free dancing in the mushrooms. Gemizhananik, migwanak gemizhananik. Mi sanjwe ang bazikamawat. Pichidibeshko minodzwan e jinnimiowat. Miirash o zawaganeuak. Wisa gorek, wisa goreng. Apta mitgomish, apta genebigobak. Mizatigan an angashka awiwat adwejik. Injinawan cia adweowin. Genijansanak wajeyangwa ashamagwa. Oshki enendemowanan. Migwanabach gawin wa migadesewat. We give them. We give them plumes and quills and downy tips to wear while dancing like smooth currents. They become golden feathered half-breeds in the burnt forest, part oak, part fern. Solid branches, soft bracken. They are traders in an evolved economy. Our decorated children nourished on new ideas, possibly able to avoid old battlefields. Oni jante shak giz egzewak samgik enemowat in goreng wa e jidabajemowat. The promisers. Sometimes the rain came twice, and that is when they lied. The old men twisted the dusty promises they once made as young lovers. The old ladies baked the tales until they rose beyond believability. The grandchildren adored them for this ability to reimagine their lives. Their own children were frightened by the idea of what they themselves would one day say. You can tell it was a lot easier for me to read mine than it was for me to read hearts in English. So, all right, then the last thing that we thought we would just share since we knew we had a little finite amount of time. Another thing as you announced, I don't know where you've gone off to, Leah, but anyway, the group that I sing with is Misquasening Nagamogik because as we try to teach our language and bring our language back, one of the things we're often trying to do is bring especially women together and sing. And I've been able to, all of you guys, are language folks, so you understand how hard it is sometimes to get busy adults to keep practicing their language and to get them to actually conjugate everything and use all of the things they know. So, some of the songs that we've written, I've like cunningly put in their transitive animate verbs and negatives. So, that was the thing that I was trying to do and there was a song, a Nina Simone song about just feeling good. And when we were looking at all of our poems tonight, it was a balance of both of us remembering folks we've lost, thinking about some folks we know right now that were kind of holding in our hearts and hoping that their journey is easy. And also remembering that in the midst of all that, you need to still try and feel good and life goes on. So, we took the song that was originally kind of a jazz standard song and we translated it so I'll try and just sing you a little piece of that because there are no expectations. You only thought I was gonna read so if I sing it can't be too bad, right? So, we typically sing things in four so one of the things that we did was adapt it so that it had four stanzas and it has a little bit of a kind of chorus to it. So, if you know the song, you know what Nina Simone sings. She basically sings that the world around her is part of the reason that she feels good. She doesn't know what she's doing. She doesn't know what she's doing. She doesn't know what she's doing. She doesn't know what she's doing. She doesn't know what she's doing. That was just our fun thing we did. It's secular. Thank you so much. So, we'll let you take a few minutes to grab another drink, get something else to eat and then we'll be having a Farsi fiction writer and documentarian who'll be coming up with her translator. So, just take a few minutes and we'll bring up our next readers. We're gonna bring up our next set of speakers, readers and translators. This next pair I met last year, they came and did a talk at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee about their translation process. Mariam Saperri was born in Iran. She began her university career by studying medicine and then worked for a few years in a medical lab. After that, she returned to school to get a BA in film editing in 2010 and an MA in photography in 2012. For many years, she's made short films and taken photographs as well as writing short stories and translating from English into Farsi. Mariam Saperri's documentary film, Rain Once Again from 2012, won the award for the best documentary film at the Sora International Short Film Festival and was nominated in this category 28th Turan International Short Film Festival. Her next documentary, Thicker Than Paint from 2013, won the Special Cream City Cinema Jury Prize at the 5th Milwaukee Film Festival. Her photographs have been exhibited in Iran, Italy and Germany and her short stories and travel logs, some with accompanying photographs have been published in Iran in book form and in magazine form. She's now at work on her next documentary film. And Pat Lund translates her into English. They work together. So Pat is retired from teaching Spanish linguistics at Michigan State University, but she continues to publish in that field. She's the co-author of the textbook Investigación de Gramática and the manual for William Wall's visual grammar of Spanish. She's also active as a translator and is the co-author of En Otras Palabras, a textbook that uses translation to teach Spanish grammar. Her translation about collection of short stories by the Catalan author Joan Cabrede, Vintage de Verde, Winter Journey, was published in 2009. So we'll bring them up now. None of you would want to be the second act after that act. I just would like to tell you that there will be no singing. But we have done a translation together simply because Mariam is here in the United States living out her residency requirement to become a US citizen. She stays in my house and we decided that we would translate a story that she wrote while she was here. I don't speak Farsi. So she explained to me what the story was about and I made it into English. I translate from Spanish and Catalan languages that I know. The process is very dissimilar from what I'm used to. So Mariam's gonna tell you a little bit about what the story is about and then we have chosen some sections from the story that we will read to you. Mariam will read a section in Farsi and I will read this section in English. The story is very, very visual, very descriptive. It would probably be impossible to translate a different kind of story, a different style that was very syntax based. Certainly would be impossible for someone who didn't speak the language. But this particular story, because it is extremely visual, it seems to me possible to translate as long as I was informed about what it was I was to see. So Mariam will tell you a little bit about this story and then you will hear it in Farsi and English. Thanks for inviting us here. Pat was really patient, really and truly patient with me. I really love details when I write short stories and this one has a bit more of whatever I did before. So it was really tough for her to understand because my knowledge in English, my vocabulary is this much and she tries to make it perfect. It was a really tough experience but very interesting because we tried many different things to be closer to the text, to what I wrote. We looked at different maps, we went to different websites. I tried to find some images, pictures, whatever, to be closer to what I wrote and having her translate it. You're gonna, the story is very complicated and not linear but it is about two brothers who are very different from one another, G who is a scientist and as it transpires not a very nice person and his brother P who is an arty type. P's best friend is the lover of the woman whom G wanted to marry and she turned him down even though she was unmarried and pregnant. So G takes his revenge during the story so that's all you need to know about the plot. So here it comes in Farsi. And one more tiny thing is that I cannot publish this in Iran because their job is making homemade wine. So. Which is forbidden. Yeah, which is forbidden. Okay. Yanush Rudraff smelled of erasers and sawdusts. He had the habit of sticking the stub of a pencil behind his left ear. He kept his graying red hair very short. When he was shy or sleepy or lost in thought he would rub his neck. Before he began to saw he would make sure the pencil stub was behind his left ear. Behind his right ear was a cigarette waiting to be lit. The shrieking saw in his low ceiling workshop turned out log after log. He would stroke the cut surfaces. He would take a sawdust covered record from the table that held the coffee things and send a warm puff of air over it and pull out the record player with his big skillful hands. He would rub his neck and check the pencil stub behind his pink ear and carefully position the record. He would lower the needle onto the grooves. The record would start to spin and lay itself open to the needle's bite. Vivaldi's Stabat Mater, sung by a countertenor who sounded like either a man or a woman, rose like a wave to the skylight. It overflowed into the cone of light filled with dancing sawdust. The saw would shriek, the needle would spin and the singer's sad voice would get lost in the noise. When he turned off the saw it was a relief. The voice and the instruments could be heard. The sawdust would slow in the bluish light. The voice enchanted pee. They would drink wine, they would eat nougat, Eleni's homemade wine was expensive, but it was seductive. When the record stopped, when the saw was turned off, pee would read to Janusz from Kitabe Hafte, a literary magazine that is no longer published. Janusz made all kinds of things out of wood, balusters, Polish chairs, and frames for the Nastalik calligraphy of Mr. Moadab, which means apprentice, not Mr. Moadab, which means master. And recently, a swing for Eleni's apricot tree. Discipline for the hard wood is excellence. This was the Nastalik calligraphy. The Nastalik calligraphy of Mr. Moadab, the Nastalik calligraphy of Mr. Moadab, the calligraphy of Janusz Nadjar, who was the head of the P.A. on a larger scale. The calligraphy of the year was made by the office of the mayor of Bogratra. The calligraphy of Bogratra was made by a copy of Basmai, which was made by Asar-e-Rambran. With this, the calligraphy of discipline and excellence for the people of Dal, Kari, Doshwar, and Dastakhar, he made a lot of efforts and for his intention, he created P.A. The work that was done in the village of Khoshnevisi was very effective. In fact, Dr. Ghaaf, such as the things of the Narmarbut, he gave this day to himself. In fact, the only things that were given to him were the works of excellence and discipline and the high and low. Dr. Ghaaf's words were more academic. Discipline and excellence. From his work, Ghaaf, and the work of his calligraphy in Germany, the English language is also very good. Excellence is the result of discipline and hard work. This saying was written in Nastali calligraphy by Mr. Moadab. It was in the maple wood frame made by Janusz, which had been ordered by P, along with a larger and more elaborate frame. For years, these frames had decorated Dr. G's office in the lab. The second frame held a reproduction of a painting by Rembrandt. The proper composition of the non-Farcy words, excellence and discipline, was a challenge for Mr. Moadab. But in the end, he managed to come up with something for P's sake. What he did was a genuine contribution to the art of calligraphy, though Dr. G took credit for it and for other things as well. In fact, G could take credit only for insisting that excellence and discipline appear as transliterations, not as their Farcy translations. He thought that transliterations were superior, more excellent and disciplined. In addition, they showed that he knew English as well as German. P did not disagree about not translating the words into Farcy. In his incessant desire to make people happy, he paid Moadab to write out the saying and gave the frames to his brother to mark the opening of the lab. He had a different opinion than him. He had a different opinion than a child with a different type of eyes. And in the end, he had a different opinion on the children of the poor who had a different opinion on the children of the poor. Maybe these important things were not in the children's names, but he had a different opinion on why he had to deal with these things with a different perspective. No one had the same opinion as Gunter Gerhard von Hagen in the U.S. Army of Heidelberg. P was the leader of those days who were in power. His father, Tajer Khoshkhial, was the one who had a different opinion on the children of the poor who had a different opinion on the children of the poor. The second year in Afghanistan when P announced his death that he would not go to the school and that he would like to go to the school. The people of that day were very calm and the school was closed. He went to the school of Rodrov. In order to make his life better, his people made the school of Alwarh and the people of Ajib-Uqarid and the lagoon of power. His family and his brothers took him to the Shirvani family and became friends. He built his own school and took care of both the school and the school. P and G seem to be made of a entirely different materials. G had once blinded a magpie with his slingshot, while P would take in lame cats. Everyone who knew them remembered these things, and he was surprised that people held on to these insignificant facts. Nobody remembered his unequal struggle with the bone-chilling cold of Heidelberg or with Gunter Gerhardt. Why did no one remember how they'd worked on a research project together, and then that shameless man published the results under his own name? During the brief time he was in Iran for his father's funeral, it became obvious to him that he shouldn't leave his father's successful business in the hands of his unreliable younger brother. P was perfectly capable of wasting money on arty get-togethers, where his poet friends would drink wine and eat nougat and get excited about causes both political and romantic. Who cared about those causes? His insignificant little brother was very popular, more popular than G, even in the days after the government had removed him from his teaching job, and he was working as the manager of the Hippocrates Laboratory. Dr. G couldn't forget that horrifying day. The mixture of fear and happiness, the senseless way he'd laughed with fear. He couldn't forget the way the telephone rang during his ritual afternoon nap. He'd forgotten that day and never missed his time. In the morning pre Whoa Who you made now. And that's why we became the number fouriyoruz of the Spanish. Dr. Kendrick said we were facing with the conviction of exaggeration earlier than he did. He'd forgotten to unplug it. The ringing telephone and the school anthem filled him with fear. The call was from the morgue outside of working hours. He felt terrible when he heard the news. He was shocked to feel lighter as if a familiar load had fallen from his shoulders. He took a deep breath. The unfamiliar lightness and emptiness gradually became unbearable as if a weight that had kept him attached to the earth had been sucked away. He asked for details as if he were interested in them and he pretended to be sorry. Accepting that news was unbelievably hard. The ember of happiness inside him was smothered by the ashes of denial. When you don't accept a death, it's not really death, he said to himself. What did they want from him? Was it a game or a nightmare? First, he had to accept it, the death. The fate of that wandering corpse depended on the decision made by Dr. G. and the others. The earth had rejected the corpse and the river Zayande had spit it out. This was the way it had to be. Every ethnic group had its own rules. It was not Dr. G's fault, he was not the earth. It is the earth that decides whom to accept and whom to reject. Dr. G was there to practice medical science. The mountain of Yagh-e-Kheshti, Piraghan, had a lot of colors of alcohol. Until Pai Kobi returned to Angor to visit him. The rice fields, as well as Khabid-e-Azeer, have come forward to the Yagh-e-Tan army of the post-Sina-Eleni army. In the middle of the Yagh-e-Tan army, two rice farmers, like you, Pasadav, have come to the army with the rice fields on their right foot. On the right side of the rice fields, on the right side of the Yagh-e-Tan army, they made a cup of tea with the rice fields on their right side of the Taziar-e-Zanun tea. It was the right of the rice farmers. Or the right of the rice farmers, and it helped them to find that rice fields. Rice fields under the Shkananda China were outside the field, and the rice fields were in the middle of the Yagh-e-Tan line of the relatives and the island-synthe. During this period, G expected to hear at any moment from one of the cemeteries, which were multiplying in his mind, But no answer was forthcoming. Just a minute, we seem to be having a technical difficulty. No, I read that one. No, after that. That's fine. You read the last one. We're out of order, but never mind. As I said, the story isn't linear, so it's OK. So if you needed any proof that I really don't speak far, see, there it is. OK, so this is the translation of what she just read, which actually in the text comes after the thing we're going to read last. OK. On that sunny day in late summer, Ellenie shone it was the first time that year for trampling the grapes. Her long, auburn hair was parted down the middle and braided, and the braids were wound over her ears into two buns. The seamstress had done a good job with her dress. The wine-colored bodice had a square neck. The color wouldn't show stains when they trampled the grapes. A row of tiny pleats around the neckline framed her soft, milky skin. Two round, shelled buttons closed the bodice over the curve of her breasts. Under it, the same fabric, printed with green clovers, fell into a full skirt. Ellenie was turning 42, though the number meant nothing to her. There were tiny wrinkles under her eyes and deepening lines on either side of her mouth. And now, this one, right? Yeah. OK. In the last week, there was no news from Gunterna. The Khaf-Tabana tribes had left the city. Unfortunately, they were waiting for one of the tribes to be taken to Sarik. The caliphate, Aramane, had not yet met with the Daphne-Nadjar. The Khaf-Shadi-Holangizir had experienced it. They were feeling happy and sad. The trip to Lahistan did not end up in Qateh. They all knew that Yanush was from Lahistan's childhood, who was living in the world's second-largest war on the borders of Siberia with his mother. And he was going to Iran. He went to Ghazar, Anzali, and then to Esfahan. But the trip to Lahistan did not end there. During the last trip to Lahistan, the woman who was still alive was not Yanush-Nadjar. During this period, she expected to hear at any moment from one of the cemeteries, which were multiplying in his mind. but no answer was forthcoming from the Armenian council about burying the carpenter. G was experiencing an eerie kind of happiness. He was filled with a combination of bliss and pain. The Polish Embassy had not responded. Janusz was one of those Polish children who'd sought asylum in Iran, along with his mother from Siberia. They'd gone to Iran via the Caspian Sea to Anzali and then to Isfahan. But the Polish Embassy had no record of his name. According to their records, there was only one person of Polish descent in Isfahan, and it was a woman. It was not Janusz the carpenter for sure. The morgue had written a letter to the Assyrian Catholics asking for their help, but they forwarded the request to the Assyrian Orthodox and the Assyrian Protestants, who also said no. After a final negative from the Nestorian Church, there was no ground left that might receive Janusz. Some of the participants in the pointless afternoon meetings at the morgue were in favor of burying the body at midnight in an unauthorized graveyard in Awaz. Gee was agitated. Yeah, well that was lovely. So let's just take a few more minutes if you want to grab another drink, get a little more to eat, and then we'll be welcoming up Brenda Cardenas. This has been just a really delightful event, and thank you so much. We have one last reader tonight. Her name is Brenda Cardenas, who is especially dear because she is a former poet laureate of Milwaukee. So let me tell you a little bit about Brenda. So Brenda Cardenas is the author of Boomerang and the chat books from the Tongues of Brick and Stone and Bread of the Earth, The Last Colors with Roberto Harrison from 2011. She also co-edited Between the Heart and the Land, Latina Poets in the Midwest. Cardenas's poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in publications such as City Creatures, Animal Encounters in the Chicago Wilderness, Angels of the America Clips, New Latina Writing, Cuadernos de A-L-D-E-E-U, Achiote Seeds, The Wind Shifts, New Latina Poetry, and The City Visible, Chicago Poetry for the New Century, among others. In 2014, the Library of Congress recorded a 40-minute reading of her work for the Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape. Cardenas is an associate professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. So let's welcome Brenda. Thank you for having me. I feel like I'm at a translation conference, but I'm not going to be reading translations. I actually do interlingual work. So for those of you who are purists, I'm naughty, okay, because I mix the languages. And I will begin with a poem that sort of plays with that very idea. It's called Al Mestisaje. Al Mestisaje. In Michente's hips, la clave, and from Michente's lips, sale, a fluid funky lingo fusion that fools among you call intrusion. But purity is an illusion. So if you can't dig la mezcla, chale. Siempre nos hacen bailar. Es el que nuestro choque el ole en mi posole que todos van a celebrar. Hay un oso ensabroso y tanto ajo en carrajo que la verdad requiere ver y no podemos hacer nada sin un ser. En la mente de mi gente que es tan inteligente, hermanos se levantan las manos y todos los derechos están hechos. Echale. Es como anda la banda. Echale. Wacha. Mitotacha. Teracatos. Un mitote de calor. Es la lengua de mis cuates. Un cuetazo chicano. We call Allah with ojala. Encendios with adios. And the alma in tamal feeds us all. Orale. Gracias. Thank you. That's partly why I mix languages. I also mix them because people ask me, what's your first language? And I have to answer Spanish. I grew up in a household with first language Spanish speakers, first language English speakers, and first language Slovenian speakers all in one home. So I got accustomed to hearing a lot of tongues. And this is a little poem that sort of reflects on that back and forth between languages as a conversation between a grandfather and his granddaughter. Abuelito y sus cuentos origin of the bird beak mole. Abuelito, what's that on your arm? Este? This little bump? Sí que es. Un día cuando era joven estaba trabajando en un jardín bellísimo. Cuando lo en behold the little bird swooped down and stuck his, how do you say? His beak. See his beak in my arm and I twisted and I twisted in circles around and around until his beak broke off right in my muscle. Y ya mira, tengo su nariz en el brazo. Para abuelito, what happened to the bird? En México, sí niña, the bird stayed en las montañas con sus amigos hactándose su herida de combate. But grandpa, how can he talk? How will he even live without a beak? Oh, you know, you lose a little here, a little there. He will learn. Thank you. And this one again is a little childhood reflection that will, that speaks of that household. When we moved away from Tia Elias and Uncle Carl's 1968, I almost stayed put. We lived above them, see, the minute the door creaked open, me shouting from the top, stare, Uncle Kaku, come get me. Tia Elias told me stories day and night, taught me to draw paint right. I wouldn't climb home until my eyes had grown heavy as the whole planet. She put magic spice in the food, made it taste like what people must eat in heaven or Mexico. She'd sing sana, sana colita de rana all over my bumps and bruises and believe me, they would disappear. Uncle Carl always wanted me to teach him to spell night, knife, all those silent letter words because he escaped from Yugoslavia when he turned 14 and was still learning English. He learned Spanish pretty well. Abuelitos kind that calls owls, tecolotes and straws, popotes. Tia Elias phone conversations with Tia Chole never got past him. He taught me to say English in German. I want to go to work. Then we tried to add Spanish but wound up sounding like Hansel and Gretel in Atakeria. They named me Kaka Huate, Mantekia, Princess Red Chicks. And I was the queen of peanut butter, sticking to them like a sandwich to the roof of your mouth. I wrote a series of poems. At one point, I was studying Spanish linguistics in Spanish and it got to me. I started going into my room and meditating on sounds. My roommate at the time thought I was a little nuts because I would just be repeating these certain sounds in the Spanish language over and over again. Then I started to write down the images that came to my mind when I thought about and heard those sounds. Then from there I crafted the poems. I'm going to read a couple of the poems from that series. The series is called Sound Waves and it begins with an epigraph from Victor Hernandez Cruz who said the river on the other side of English is carrying the message. And the first poem is called Tono De. Some days cushion the dental edges of our lives like night's cool curve swerving into the music of light dandonos the soft shoulder de voz. Danilo y Diana sweep the street of its blossoms. They hand piles of magenta petals lining the gutters de la colonia. Si hay basura, un cigarrillo acá, una lata allá, but we are blinded by hyacinth suns bursting from the pavement. When dusk sinks into la plaza, desleando our braided days, 100 black wings sing in the ceiling of leaves above Gabbo's favorite cafe. The curl of carrú, carrú, carrú, floating like a feather to his chair. This day es una danza de dedos pressing half moons into clay, the consonant touch of tongue to teeth, arching the sound away. And in that series as well, Intensidad Eñe. And I wrote it before they started calling us in erasión Eñe. So didn't come from that. Intensidad Eñe. El campesino rolls his shoulder blades as he turns from the furrows toward the roads, curved home. Otro año, otro día, otra estación. El añojado con su añojado Eñe, the yawn in mañana. La araña weaves her web of music, tuning its strings while she sings de sus compañeras obrando en las cabañas, labrando en los campos de caña. She holds the high notes, pulling filaments taught, and when a fly's wing touches one fiber, everything vibrates. Laña gaza del balance. A cat's arch and curled spine stretches into the long afternoon, sueña con alemañas espiando de las montañas, sueña con carne, the wiring tension of spring and pounce on the small bone and the broken winged, the snare of engaño. Deep heat of day rises like a serpent from its cool tomb, entrañado beneath the sand, leaves its till-day trace, la señal that loosens and fades, one moment sliding into centuries of terrain, el diseño antiguo del futuro. Diamond skinned kulkulkan, guiñando desde el cielo, slides past clouds over the edge of sun at the tip of chichen, onto a shadow of stone, the equinox of a plumed past, the slow and brilliant tilt de los añosos. Coiled in mantillas pañosas y los llantos oscuros de añoranza, the fire eater waits for night to define the sharp outlines of his sustenance. La flama debajo de su seño como una piñata abriendo en una cascada de luz, su señorada cayendo los gañidos desesperados de niños, eyes squeezed tight above the blackened rim of his open mouth, the grimace of resistance un puño contra la saña del hambre. And then I have a couple of more poems. This one I actually did write in Spanish and did my own translation into English, so I'll read both. And it's called Poema para los Tin Tunteros. I used to work with a band called Sonido en Quieto, and the musicians were all Mexican-American, Chicanos from Chicago, where I was living at the time in Pilsen. And a lot of them had come out of the punk and espanol tradition. And so we used to have a whole lot of fun. And I used to have to not be able to do readings like this because I would have to go, you know, to get up over the music. But one thing that I loved was watching the drummer and how he was always keeping time, even when we weren't playing music, right? There's a way that drummers are always keeping the rhythm for all of us. And so this is called Poema para los Tin Tunteros. Este para los Tim Valeros, los bateristas, los Tin Tunteros, los que tocan con cucharas en sus estufas, con lápices en sus escritorios, con uñas y nudíos en mesas muebles, sus propias cabezas, con puños contra paredes y dedos en las espinas y curvas de sus amantes, dansantes. Este para los congueros, los tamboristas, los bongoseros, los que nunca descansan con sus tacones siempre gopeando la piel del piso, zapateando en sus sueños llenos de maracas, guiros y claves. Estos baladores con pasos tan suaves y caderas que se muevan como sus hi-hats y tarolas. Este para los Tim Valeros, los bateristas, los Tin Tunteros, son chingones con sus tormentas de platíos, sus huegos de palíos que vuelan como alas que malas, sus trampas que no nos permitan trabajar ni dormir. Solamente bailar y cantar, cantar y bailar y a veces mover la tierra un poquito. Poem for the Tin Tunteros. This for the Tim Valeros, percussionists, Tin Tunteros, those who tap with spoons on their stoves, with pencils on their desks, with nails and knuckles on tables, beds their own heads, with fists against walls and fingers on the spines and curves of their lovers, dancers. This for the congueros, drummers, bongoseros, those who never rest with their staccato heels always hammering the skin of the floor, stomping in their dreams filled with maracas, guiros and claves. These dancers with steps so smooth and hips that move like their hi-hats and snares. This for the Tim Valeros, percussionists, Tin Tunteros, their badasses with their cymbal storms, their games of sticks that fly like wings, how scampish their tricks that won't let us work or sleep, only dance and sing and sing and dance and sometimes move the earth a little. Thank you. I don't know if any of you are familiar with the work, the artwork of Guillermo Gomes Pena. I imagine that many of you are and as you know he does installation and I went to view his piece that he did with Roberto Cifuentes called The Temple of Confessions when it was in Detroit and it just so happened that it coincided with someone issuing me a challenge to write a poem in old English a literative verse. So I received that challenge and the next day I went and I saw Gomes Pena's show and I thought oh okay so this is called Report from the Temple of Confessions in Old Chicano English. Se cruzan canyons in el templo de confessions, language lies across the barbed lines, piles of its limbs pierced y pinchados, risky recordings reveal what we think of the other offering his objectified body to the river rats who ride his wet back, the coro de coyotes who crave his flesh, the way faced who whisper their sin in his ear, the translators who trap and trade his tongue, la raza who receive him, la raza who repel him. In this chamber the chill of chicken flesh, bojito mojado picoso y picado, the black body bag of the repatriated, here the distorted words of debutantes, eduguders, of nono betters, neo-nazis, of beow-woofs, and other born again beasts, of sandal sombrero sleeping under cacti, of makiavellian mentesi mouths, of anthropological auto ethnography, of pretend pachucas peeling their layers, of preachers and poets with puckered lips of the misused multi-cultural machinery of the Hispanic hodgepodge hiding their indio, of the quetzalcoats concealing their conqueror de la migra meando, marking its turf. Here the hemistiched hemisphere's blend, a vacuum of voices absorbed in the velvet paintings of slick y sexy santos, of the Aztec icon at the altar of Aslan, tripping and turning transvestite warrior of the cyber cholo stripping down, simón, the vato loco's liquid eye lures us over borders, their blurred, tumbling barriers calling us to come, stare into the cage, jaola de joda aquí juntandonos, the table turned intact to the wall, licked with votives licking our luscious breakfast bowl of cucarachas on their backs, squirming to free their feet and fly. The poem does have two hemistiches because they make this beautiful little gutter down the middle of the page, which for me becomes the border. And it does have three alliterations per line. I'm going to close with a newer piece, which in the middle of it also references another Gomez-Pena piece where they put, when he was working with the Border Arts Workshop and they put a dinner table up on the Mexican-American border. One half was in the U.S., the other half was in Mexico. And of course, when one had to pass the salt, one had to illegally cross the border. And the piece isn't about that, but it's referenced in here. It's called Our's Resistencia, Fish Bottle Caps from Heaps of Distillery Waste, Sift Trash for Milk Tin Lids, Swift, sorry, I'm sorry, let me start that again. Fish Bottle Caps from Heaps of Distillery Waste, Sift Trash for Milk Tin Lids, Twist, Crush, Chain Link them to each other like thousands of small arms locking. Drape them into 15 by 30 foot seas of kente cloth, tapestry, grasslands swagged in wind, speckled with red wings, blue, silver, agama. Do this in communion with others. Urge them to reshape landscape, shift peaks and folds, call it salvage, reuse, synergetic upcycle, call it recover and reclaim, call it puro rascuache. Do this in memory of network, warp and weft, twist and distort, texture, strike the loom. Do this in memory of mesh fences we peer through in a post fence, wireless world, blocked and barbed just for us. Make yourself so small the cuffs fall from your wrists, then thread the warp, climb, crawl. Drag your dinner table a la frontera. Set one end acá en México, el otro allá. Prepare posole with all the fixings. Invita tus amigos de ambos lados. Claro, Adelita will ask Paul to pass the heat. Los jalapenos y rábanos, por favor. Pero la migra will be waiting, wachando. Y cuando Paul's pinky sneaks over the line, they may not let him back in ese. He'll have to sell his bowl of dreams. The least you can do is bring him some aguacate, un poquito de cilantro, show us your fancy footwork, your disappearing act. Now you're here, ahora. Storm tomato fields spitting fricatives, snapping toxic vines, slingshot plosives at orange groves, dropping citrus into the blistered hands, reaching to picket up the ante. Plant your syllables on picket lines, pace. Plant yourselves in public space. Refuse to flinch. Plant feet so firm, will takes root. Plant will so wide, eat ears, sprout ancestral maze. Eat of this body, un-engineered. Do this in memory of corn, potatoes, papaya, squash, tomatoes, cotton, canola, soy, beets, zucchini, cane. Do this in memory of milkweeds, marnarks, honeybees. Do this in memory of water, your last sip. Paint the winter white howl. Inscribe the undivided o. Sound the voiced and voiceless stops of hunger strike, of boycotts broken shackles, de calacas, with their midnight carcajadas waking us from sleep. Thank you. Muchas gracias. See everybody in Tucson. See you there. Okay, in Tucson. We just have one last hand for Kim, for Meg, for Pat, for Mariam, and for Brenda. Thank you so much, and thank you for a wonderful conference.