In the Glittering Maw: Surrealist poetry with C. Francis Fisher and special guests
4:00 pm PT
Cushion Works | 3320 18th Street | San Francisco, CA
C. Francis Fisher reads from her translation of In the Glittering Maw, the first English-language collection focused on the later works of the Arab-Jewish Surrealist poet Joyce Mansour. Daniel Owen reads his translations of contemporary Indonesian poet Afrizal Malna, and Olivia Sears reads her translations of Italian futurist Ardengo Soffici.
One of the most important female Surrealist writers, Joyce Mansour (1928–1986) was born in England to Syrian-Jewish parents. Soon after her birth, the family moved to Cairo, where Mansour lived until she was forced to emigrate. She settled in Paris in 1953, where she continued writing and became a key member of the postwar Surrealist milieu.
Mansour’s late poems chart constellations of desire, femininity, and dream. Considered by Andre Bréton to be the preeminent Surrealist of the post-war period, Mansour brings this masculine movement into a feminine realm never-before-imagined. She insists on a forgotten or perhaps vehemently denied eventuality of women’s equality: their ability to do harm, to be violent: “Why tear fire from the impalpable sky / When it already grows and smolders in me / Why throw your glove into the crowd / Tomorrow is a livid stump.”
In the Glittering Maw, poet C. Francis Fisher’s first published translation, is lauded by Mark Polizotti for “[giving] fresh voice to a fierce, passionate, sensuous, scandalous cry that has strained to be heard in the Anglophone world for over half a century.”
C. Francis Fisher received her MFA in poetry from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, The Yale Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She has been supported by fellowships from Bread Loaf and the Vermont Studio Center. She curates Colloquy, an event series that provides a forum for translators to engage with live audiences in an exploration of the art of translation. In the Glittering Maw is her first book of translations.
Daniel Owen is a poet, editor, and translator between Indonesian and English. Recent publications include a revised translation of Afrizal Malna’s Document Shredding Museum (World Poetry Books, 2024). Daniel edits and designs books and participates in many processes of the Ugly Duckling Presse editorial collective and is a PhD candidate in the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley.
Olivia E. Sears is a translator of Italian poetry and founder of the Center for the Art of Translation, where she edited the journal Two Lines for over a decade. Her translations of contemporary poet Mariangela Gualtieri have recently appeared in Arkansas International, Circumference, The Common, and Copper Nickel, among others. She is currently completing a manuscript of Gualtieri’s poetry in English, When I Wasn’t Dying.