November 1, 2018—White Pine Press, the Cliff Becker Endowment for the Literary Arts, and the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) are proud to announce the winner of the seventh annual Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation, which produces one volume of literary translation in English, annually.
This year’s winner is Cole Heinowitz for her translation from the Spanish of Bleeding From All 5 Senses by Mario Santiago Papasquiaro. Judges Daniel Borzutzky, Aaron Coleman, and Mani Rao read and reviewed over thirty book manuscripts in determining the winner of the prize. The book will be published by White Pine Press in fall 2019 thanks to support from the Center for the Art of Translation. The judges had the following to say about Heinowitz’s manuscript:
The raucous energy and desperate inventiveness of Bleeding From All 5 Senses takes on a second life in Heinowitz’s sinuous translations of Papasquiaro. Melding persistent social and emotional urgency, Bleeding from All 5 Senses affectively embodies something vital of our tumultuous world.
In a compendium of tones ranging from the slyly humorous to the jarringly serious, Heinowitz renders Papasquiaro’s poems with meticulous care and creativity. Heinowitz conveys the intensity and music of Papasquiaro’s voice in English in such a way that the poet’s language takes on new valences of meaning in both Unitedstatesian and international anglophone contexts. Heinowitz’s translation of Papasquiaro’s roving tonal shifts, idiosyncratic syntax, and mosaic of sociocultural concerns makes a new and useful contribution to contemporary anglophone poetry.
Additionally, the judges for the 2019 Cliff Becker Prize have awarded Honorable Mentions to Bradley Schmidt for his translation from the German of Invasion in Reverse by Lea Schneider, and Thom Satterlee for his translation from the Danish of The Small Crosses: Selected Poetry of Annemette Kure Andersen. They had this to say about the runners-up:
Invasion in Reverse’s deft handling of the book-length prose poem form creates an unexpected and unique dynamism – page after page of long prosaic lines unleashes a sea of darkly humorous and incisively insightful images, epiphanies, and furtive confessions. There is much to admire in the way this translation sustains an understated yet profoundly thoughtful energy inside a form that at times feels like an endless expanse, at times feels like a cage.
The impressive concision of The Small Crosses animates the conceit of small crosses with fine-tuned tension and emotional poignancy. Satterlee’s translations impressively maintain the formal and syntactical compression of poems that resound with vivid and captivating feeling.
Submissions for the 2020 Cliff Becker Book Prize will be accepted starting in January 2019. Please visit us at www.literarytranslators.org/awards for more information.