BIOS
Fabián Severo (Artigas, Uruguay, 1981) is a literature teacher and an academic administrator for the literature and creative writing section of Project ProArte at the Uruguayan National Public Education Administration. In 2012, he received the Justino Zavala Muniz Fellowship in the Arts from the Uruguayan Ministry of Education and Culture and in 2011, he was awarded the Bronze Morsoli Medal in the Poetry from the Foundation Lolita Rubial. Severo is the author of four poetry collections: Noite nu Norte (Montevideo, Uruguay: Ediciones del Rincón, 2010 and Montevideo, Uruguay: Rumbo Editorial, 2011), Viento de Nadie (Rumbo Editorial, 2013), NósOtros (Rumbo Editorial, 2014), Viralata (Rumbo Editorial, 2015).
Laura Cesarco Eglin is an Uruguayan poet and translator. Her translations (from the Spanish, Portuguese, Portuñol, and Galician) include Of Death: Minimal Odes by the Brazilian Hilda Hilst (co•im•press, 2018). Her poetry collections include: Calling Water by Its Name, translated by Scott Spanbauer (Mouthfeel Press, 2016) and Occasions to Call Miracles Appropriate (The Lune, 2015). She is the co-founding editor and publisher of Veliz Books and an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Simpson College.
Jesse Lee Kercheval is a poet and translator, and a 2016 NEA Fellow in Translation. Her translations include Invisible Bridge/ El puente invisible: Selected Poems of Circe Maia (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015) and Fable of an Inconsolable Man (Action Books, 2017) by Javier Etchevarren. She is also the editor of América invertida: An Anthology of Emerging Uruguayan Poets (University of New Mexico Press, 2016). She is the Zona Gale Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.
Fabián Severo, translation from the Portuñol by Jesse Lee Kercheval and Laura Cesarco Eglin
from NIGHT IN THE NORTH (3 poems)
Eighteen
The hour when the sun hides
is the hour when one listens.
The stars pop out and
the fireflies light up.
The crickets sing and bring good luck.
I close the gate
and go into myself
so I can think
and so I can write.
Twenty-six
My father prepared mate
brought a chair to the side of Josefa’s house
and sat there so he could listen to the news.
We did not have a TV.
One time
my parents went to buy a used TV.
They went by bus
I stayed behind waiting.
When they returned
they set everything up but the TV didn’t work.
They tried this, that, but nothing.
After a long time
they were able to buy a new one.
It was big
black and white
full of with buttons.
I spent hours in front
of the turned off TV
just watching.
Every morning
Xuxa sang
and they played cartoons
the kind that doesn’t exist anymore.
When, at last, we had a TV
my father was able to drink mate
inside
our house.
Twenty-nine
Old Mary died to leave us the sidewalk.
Every afternoon
she sat there drinking sweet mate
with a street dog lying at her feet
and a battery-powered radio
to listen to her programs.
She growled and threatened us with her cane
so we wouldn’t play soccer
but she was also the one that cured us
of the shingles and the evil eye.
Now we can play without being bothered.
But Mary was our neighbor
and her house is closed forever now
with the dog lying at the door
waiting.
She died to leave us the sidewalk
but the sidewalk is still hers.