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Conference Schedule 2020

Conference Schedule 2020

Friday, February 21, 2020, 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.

Poetry and its Translation: Tiawanaku’s Approach to Pluricultural Poetics with Ilana Luna, Judith Santopietro

Date(s): Friday, February 21, 2020, 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
Location: Thoren, University Club (view map)
Type(s): Conversation, Discussion, Panel, Presentation, Reading, Talk
Genre and Form(s): Feminism, Latin American, Latinx, Poetry, Translation, Women's Studies, World Literature
Tags: Spanish, Politics, Latin America

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About the Session

This panel will center on the poetic work of Mexican Poet Judith Santopietro, highlighting her political commitment to including indigenous languages in European language texts and contexts. We will discuss both the original Spanish and the poetic translation in English, by Professor Ilana Luna (ASU) of Santopietro’s most recent book Tiawanaku: Poemas de la madre coqa / Poems from the Mother Coqa (Orca Libros, 2019). This panel will include bilingual reading from the book, a discussion of the ethical considerations of translation and publication, the dissemination of women writers from Latin America, as well as a reflection on the creative process itself by the author and translator.

Meet the Presenter(s)

Photograph of Ilana Luna


Ilana Luna

Ilana Luna is Associate professor of Latin American Studies and Spanish at Arizona State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with an emphasis in literary translation (2011). (M.A. University of California, Santa Barbara, 2006; B.A. Bryn Mawr College, 2001). At ASU she teaches on Latin American film, literature in Spanish and in translation, and Latin America Cultural Studies. She author of the book Adapting Gender: Mexican Feminisms from Literature to Film (SUNY Press, 2018) that considers the subversive potential of film adaptation of literary texts that intersect with feminist discourses in a neoliberal Mexico. She is the Director of Programming for the international film Femme Revolution Film Fest in Mexico City, and a writer and translator of poetry and prose. You can find some of her work in the journals Jacket2, Hostos Review, Askew, Four Chambers Press, Oomph!, Barzakh, Hektoen International, Vice Versa, and Contrapuntos. She has translated Juan José Rodinás’s Koan: Underwater (Cardboard House Press, 2018),  Judith Santopietro’s Tiawanaku: Poems from the Madre Coqa (Orca Libros) and Giancarlo Huapaya’s Sub Verse Workshop (Lavender Ink/ Diálogos)


Learn more about Ilana Luna

Photograph of Judith Santopietro


Judith Santopietro

Judith Santopietro was born in Córdoba (Veracruz, México) in 1983, though she was also raised between Ixhuatlán del Café and Boca del Monte, native communities in the Altas Montañas to which her family belongs. There she first heard stories about nahuales, chaneques, flying women, and other extraordinary beings from the Mesoamerican world. Her mother tongue is Spanish; nevertheless, she has learned Nahuatl for political reasons and to honor her foremothers who dreamed and lived in that language. Judith holds a Master’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin and has carried out research residencies in the Sierra de Zongolica and Tecomate (Veracruz), the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (Texas), and the University of Leiden (Netherlands), as well as in New York and Bolivia. She directed the project Iguanazul: Literature in Indigenous Languages, and has published the books Palabras de Agua (Instituto Veracruzano de Cultura-Praxis, 2010) and Tiawanaku. Poemas de la Madre Coqa (Hanan Harawi Editores, 2017) —the first version in Spanish—, as well as the essay “Migrantes nahuas celebran a Santiago Apóstol: un ejercicio de comunalidad en Nueva York” (Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas, 2017/ Leiden University Press, 2016). She was awarded the Lázara Meldiú National Poetry Prize in 2014 and was a finalist for the International Literary Prize “Aura Estrada” in 2017.  She has published in the Anuario de Poesía Mexicana 2006(Fondo de Cultura Económica), Rio Grande Review, La Jornada and The Brooklyn Rail, and has also participated in numerous festivals, including PEN America’s World Voices Festival in Nueva York, 2018. Her updated re-edition of Poemas de la madre coqa was published in bilingual format (trans. Ilana Luna) at Orca Libros.


Learn more about Judith Santopietro