You can listen to the episode here.
Episode description:
Today's guest is the Argentinian writer Marina Porcelli. We're joined by podcast research assistant Derick Edgren Otero for a conversation on the ways they've collaborated in translating a piece originally authored by Porcelli. The piece has since been published; you can read it here. We also discussed a variety of other topics, including the importance of writing about work.
Bio: Marina Porcelli (fiction writer, essayist; Argentina) is the author of the novella A WINTER NOTEBOOK (2021), a collection of essays on gender NAUSICAA. JOURNEY TO THE OTHER SIDE OF OTHERNESS (2021), the story collections THE HUNT (2016) and OF THE BROKEN NIGHT (2009/2021), and others. Her work has garnered her the 2014 Edmundo Valadés Ibero-American Award and the 2021 Eduardo Mallea National Essay Award; she has attended residences in Mexico, Canada, and China. A frequent contributor to Latin American newspapers, she writes the column “The Lyrical Knockout” about gender and boxing for Playboy Mexico. Her participation was made possible by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
Read Marina Porcelli’s English writing sample: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/PORCELLI_sample_formatted.pdf.
Read Marina Porcelli’s writing sample in the original language: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/PORCELLI_sample_original.pdf.
Say the World: An International Writing Podcast is made by the International Writing Program. The hosts are IWP Director Christopher Merrill, most recently the author of ON THE ROAD TO LVIV (Arrowsmith Press, 2023) and IWP Communications Coordinator Mike Meginnis, most recently the author of DROWNING PRACTICE (Ecco, 2022). Additional research, transcription, and other support provided by Research Assistant Derick Edgren Otero.
IWP programming is primarily funded by the University of Iowa and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) at the U.S. Department of State, with additional funding provided by organizations like the Doris Duke Foundation, as well as donors like you. If you’d like to donate to IWP, go to bit.ly/iwp-support.
Learn more about IWP at iwp.uiowa.edu.
Episode transcript:
[music: "Gymnopédie No. 1" by T. Bless & the Professionals]
Mike Meginnis:
Welcome to Say the World: an International Writing Podcast. I'm Mike Meginnis, the Communications Coordinator at the IWP.
Christopher Merrill:
And I'm Christopher Merrill, the director of the IWP. This week we interview Marina Porcelli, who is a fiction writer and essayist from Argentina.
MM:
This interview is different from the others that we've shared so far, because this was the first one that we did without you, Chris. You were traveling at the time. I'm not sure where...
CM:
And I'm not sure either.
MM:
It was—It looked tiring. I wasn't jealous. And so you start jealous when you see somebody travel on the first trip.
CM:
Yeah.
MM:
And then the eighth trip comes around. Yeah, I think like maybe actually, I'm okay with not being on that flight.
CM:
Not nearly as glamorous as it appears.
MM:
We had the good fortune, though, of—our research assistant for this podcast, Derick Edgren Otero, who is also a graduate assistant on staff at the International Writing Program. He just happened to be working with Marina on a translation of a piece that has actually since been published in the IWP's online literary magazine 91st Meridian and we'll put a link to that in the show notes so you can check it out. But it was a lot of fun to bring Derickk in for that conversation and listen to them and Marina discuss the process. First, the writing of the piece that was being translated, and then the thinking that went into this translation that Derick was doing as part of the International Translation Workshop here at the IWP.
CM:
Which is a workshop that we pioneered here. It turns out that the whole pedagogy of teaching translation, the art of the possible, if you will, with moving one work from a language that you know, perhaps to another one, began at the University of Iowa in the Writers Workshop when the longtime director of the program Paul Engle, invited Edmund Keeley, the novelist and quite wonderful translator of Greek poets like Odysseus Elytis and Yiannis Ritsos, George Seferis and Constantine Cavafy, and he said to him, I want you to teach a translation workshop, and Edmund Keeley had no idea what that was. Paul Engle essentially said, "Invent it," and from that grew the idea of our pioneering in translation workshop where we pair off the visiting writers in the IWP up with graduate students from our MFA programs in translation, in nonfiction, in poetry, in fiction. Generally, we are always hoping, of course, that the writers will be translated by the translators who know their language. But that's not always the case. In a residency that might bring in writers from thirty different countries, we will per force have languages that no one has any access to, so we work with English trots in some cases, and a lot of the conversation is about how to edit something into English that would approximate what was going on in the original, will find some sort of a musical equivalent for what's in the original. Now, translating from a language you don't know, is indefensible. Unless, of course, the alternative is silence or, or a terrible scholarly translation. So what we're trying to do is get vibrant work from one language into another by any means possible.
MM:
Yeah, conveniently, Marina writes in Spanish, which is not a difficult language to find a translator for you're in Iowa. But when someone is translating in this class for a language that they don't know, does that come down to a lot of conversations with the writer of the piece about what was happening and sort of a coming together to create a new text?
CM:
When I've done it, it seems to me it's all about asking probing questions. I think of myself really more as a journalist than anything else, trying to understand the literary context in which the writer is working, trying to understand their influences, how they relate to the subject, and then just ask question after question. What do you mean by this? What do you mean by that? And how does this sound? What kind of a sound do you think it should have in this language rather than that language? And it's, it's an impossible task. And yet, it's a lot of fun. And we come out with good new work.
MM:
Yeah, I feel like you would learn some really interesting things from that. You know, one of the I've only been translated the one time I was translated into Spanish once, and I did not have to really be involved in the process. I just got to see the end result. In that case, I was surprised by how close it felt to the original. I felt like yes, actually, if I were to, to translate this, this is pretty much what I would have come up with. But it was one kind of magic to see that that document just sort of revealed right to see this person who never—they never asked me any questions. And then they, and then they came up with this result that I simultaneously was the author of. And that was completely unfamiliar to me. Right. So that was one kind of experience. And then I imagined that it would be a very different experience to have to explain—to answer those questions, to sort of justify, because if you were to ask me why I did a lot of the things that I do, I feel like I could—sometimes I could give you a really long, really specific answer, and I could really give you a lot to work with. And then sometimes I'd be like, I don't know. It sounded cool to me. Yeah, do something that sounds cool.
CM:
Well, for me, I'm always hoping I'll get a lot of questions from the translators. Because first of all, it reveals in every case something that I take for granted in the language that I write in, which is in English. And that always makes me just think a little harder about what I'm, how I write the next thing. And if I'm not getting a lot of questions, I get nervous because I think this is a translator who is certain they know what they're doing. And if they're certain they know what they're doing, then there could be problems because translation is the most imprecise art we're, we're again, we're hoping to translate—not, not make a literal translation, but to translate musical phrase for musical phrase. That's a harder operation and anyone who claims certainty is probably already in trouble.
MM:
On this case, we have a student doing the translation so there was no claim of certainty. There was only openness to the new experience and learning and collaboration and it was a lot of fun to see like I said, so.
CM:
and Derick happens to be a really gifted writer and translator.
MM:
Yes, absolutely.
[transition music: "Hazy Sky" by nuer self]
Marina Porcelli:
(reading) Ladi Macbeth, a las seis de la mañana. Reflexio onis, ese movimiento que va de un punto a otro, más allá del principio del placer. En cuadro número uno y en rigor, pienso, solo hay una hora shakespereana. La de las vísperas. Que suele ocurrir a la medianoche, en concreto, en ese momento en que la noche tironea y se alarga. Cuando da la impresión que the night never finds the day.
Derick Edgren:
(reading) The Story of Leidi Macbeth as Told by Marcia González at an Ungodly Hour by Marina Porcelli. Reflexio: it’s Latin, meaning reflection, turning away or back, to somewhere beyond pleasure. In this, the first act, there’s only one kind of hour for Shakespeare. The hour for prayer. Meaning some ungodly hour, usually. When the night casts out its arms like it'll never reach the day again.
MP:
En una hora así se suicidó mi hermano. Pedro era dos años mayor y se ahorcó en el cuarto del asylum. Digo asylum a propósito. Suena a palabra shakespereana pero cualquiera, no es una palabra shakespereana. Lo digo porque bueno. Me hace modular, vibrar los labios y vibrar los labios a esta hora es importante. Que lo diga así delata que no se trata de una obra de teatro, sino de una narración: contar una obra de teatro. De contarla en cuatro cuadros, y a ver qué pasa. La palabra siempre dice y no hay palabra que no diga. ¿Actuar en tu casa es actuar? Marcia González levanta la cabeza con brusquedad. Mira el techo, hace una especie de vibrato con la boca.
DE:
It was during this kind of hour that her brother took his own life. Pedro was two years for senior. He had hanged himself in his room at the asylum. Yes, asylum. That word sounds like Shakespeare, doesn't it? I guess it's not really though. I just like to say it because I get to play with my words. It makes my lips vibrate, which is important at this hour. But to put it that way reveals that this is not just a play, but a story. It's really the telling of a play. So I'm just going to tell it in four acts and see what happens. Because even written word speak. There's not a word that doesn't. Is this acting? She raises her head abruptly, looks at the roof. Makes a sort of vibrato with her mouth.
MP:
Está en camisón y tiene más de cuarenta años. Quién. Yo. Es como una previa. Una víspera. Son las seis y treinta y cinco de la mañana, yo me desperté a las seis, para actuar. Que se entienda, hago mi entrenamiento hasta las ocho, cuando salgo (en este punto habla muy despacio, acentúa cada una de las sílabas y repite) cuando salgo para la fi-sher and-shark-er-ar-gen-tin-com-pa-ní. Soy Ladi Macbeth. O casi. La recamarera. Cuestión que esto de actuar de seis treinta am a ocho am me despabila.
DE:
She’s in a nightdress and over forty years old. Who? I, Marcia González. Think of this as a preview. A prayer. It’s six thirty-five in the morning, I woke up at six, to rehearse. I do my training until eight, then I go off (at this point she is speaking very slowly, accentuating every syllable, and repeats) then I go off work as an interpreter for the Ar-gen-tine Fish-ing Com-pa-ny. I am Leidi Macbeth. Well. The chambermaid for now. But rehearsing as her from six-thirty to eight is what’s getting me out of bed.
MP:
My name is Marina Porcelli. I'm from Buenos Aires. I wrote this play in a frame, and it was like a workshop with actors and the director. One of the actors told me, Oh, we want to set a story about an actress. And we would start talking about it, we think that one of the most important thing that we were happening for the actors and for the writers and probably for the painters too is that we were working a lot. So we're working a lot in a lot of things to have our time for writing and for acting. So we were all over—I mean, the director and the actors—we were all over forty, and we started thinking that maybe that was our story. How we are trying to do our work, write our books, to do our plays, in this context, because we live in Buenos Aires. It's a very, maybe it's a very busy context. I mean, there are a lot of things happening all the time. And we were always busy. So our question was, what time do we have for these things that is obviously our whole life? I mean, writing and acting.
My first proposal was about Macbeth because obviously I love Macbeth. But I didn't do a very good reading about Macbeth. I am not expressing properly—I mean, the translations that come to Buenos Aires, I am not sure if they are okay, if they are good, if they are "academic," if they are very deep. But we are still reading Shakespeare. I have been reading Shakespeare, I don't know, my whole life. So I will think that my Shakespeare is my own Shakespeare. You know, I mean, my personal Shakespeare. And that's very important for our map of work. So I decide that it will be a woman, it will be a woman alone, over four years, and she works a lot. And, and she has her own interpretación. I mean, she has her own reading about Macbeth. So one of the proposals of this play is to translate Macbeth into Spanish, into Argentinian Spanish in a very specific place in a very specific time, with our own words, and that's proposed that that is the kind of challenge. It's a very, I don't know, difficult, maybe difficult challenge, if you want to translate this play to—into English again, I mean, so the translation is one of the keys of the this, this play.
MM:
Right, we're gonna talk in a second about the translation that's happening here in the US now that Derick has been working on, but before we do that, I just want to ask about, you see the—the work that you read for us from as itself a translation from a text prepared by Shakespeare, as then translated for you by someone who has prepared it to be read by people in Argentina. You're now translating it into your sort of view of how Shakespeare should or could be written in Argentinian Spanish.
MP:
Exactly.
MM:
In your moment, and also translating, as I understand it, sort of through the filter of your lives, and, you know, the people are working on this project's lives and the lives that people are living in Buenos Aires right now, is that correct?
MP:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that was the whole proposal and the talents, because I think that we have this universal literature, I mean, universal stories, but they are very important for us if you settle the story in your own territory and with your own words, so it's a kind of—that proposal, I think Borges been talking about this. How you link with this universal literature, you know, because it's not the same, of course, our context as Shakespeare's contest, and it has to be upgraded. I mean, it's a kind of upgrade for our identities, and the funny thing, I mean, the interesting thing that she wants to be Lady Macbeth. But of course, she's not Lady Macbeth. So it's how she's leading, I don't know, dealing with this, how she's assuming this, this acting.
MM:
So we've got several layers of translation here and then we're adding on to that the work that you're doing. So Derick, I wonder if you could, just give us some context on the way that this work has been done. If you could talk about the class where it's happening, this is your second time in there, right, so—third time! So you could talk a little bit about the class overall, and then this year in particular, and this project in particular.
DE:
Yeah, absolutely. So this is round number three for me in the International Translation Workshop, which is a class hosted sort of through IWP, or in conjunction with IWP fall residents. So a couple of people, not necessarily all of them, but writers can sort of opt into working in this setting, this translation workshop, with literary translation MFAs, as well as MFAs in other writers workshops. I'm in the Playwrights Workshop. And we, over the course of a semester, are working on translations of these writers who are here in residence in Iowa City. So it's a little bit different than maybe like the traditional translation workshop in which you're working on a text that is, you know, you're not—you're not like in conversation with the writer in the same way.
And so in this case, like, I'm, I'm literally getting to talk to Marina while she's here in Iowa City, like we meet and have coffee and look at the text together. So it's, it's really involved, and even just some of the things she said are things that we've talked about before and makes the translation process feel so much more collaborative. You know, it's not just me looking at the text. It's the text in connection to her, which I think makes so much sense too just given how you've described the process of writing this text. Yeah, so and then what you said about, like, the many layers here of, of different kinds of translations feels important to talk about too. Like there's this, this cultural translation happening that you're describing from Shakespearean context to the context of Argentina, in Buenos Aires. And like, this sort of the way, I think you described it to me before, it was like this, like "street style." Like, we're sort of like taking it off of a pedestal and bringing it, making it more accessible. I feel like that was something that we talked about, too. This is like making the text—making the language, making Macbeth more accessible. And there were a lot of like, really fun challenges in terms of all of the different, like, registers of language that were in the Spanish text that you wrote, which incorporated some English in it as well.
MP:
Yes, and the importance of orality. I think that one of—the one thing I mean, the key that we need, it was because when we do our introductions, we were talking about orality. I mean, how our writing, oh, for at least how my writing is very interested in writing orality. And it's, that's a key for theatre too. I mean, I have experience I live in a in a theater, un cooperativo theatre, in Buenos Aires when I was twenty years old. And for me, it blew my mind because I realized that writing is not this rigid writing. I mean, that you have to be very correct grammatically, and I mean, all the sentences are because it came from our, I mean, routine, for us—daily, daily talking. So this daily talking when we were talking about theater, for me, it was very, very important. And I am not, I don't, I didn't write any, any theater. This is—any play before. I mean, this is maybe the second or the third. So I'm a storyteller. So that was very important too—how to talk, how to "tell" a play.
MM:
I think that there's another interesting layer to this too though in watching you listen to Derick read the work, which is that on top of all the different layers of translation that are now bringing this to your classmates and to wherever it might go after that, there's then the fact that you have the person who wrote the previous translation—is now listening to you and getting to experience it through that new filter of—okay, this has been reinvented for me now in English and you're getting to experience it for the first time, and just watching your expression while you were hearing it was was really interesting.
MP:
Yeah, I like, I like the different levels of English. I mean, I really like how this daily English suddenly then Shakespeare appears in the play. And like that. I mean, how, how it crashed. I mean, how your reality is made up of these different levels of speaking. That's very, very interesting.
MM:
I kind of want to ask both of you if there's a particular, like, takeaway that you have so far from this experience, if there's something that you've learned from hearing your work through this additional layer of translation. If there's something that you, I mean, one imagines there's something that you've learned because it's part of a class. So that's the whole goal, right? Like, what is one or two things that you've learned from the process of doing this translation and either of you can start.
MP:
The one thing that it was very important that Derick told me. In Spanish, we have these very long, long sentences, and he didn't feel comfortable with that in English. So my answer was, you have the—you can do what you want if you are you going to have the same effect. I mean, for me, it is very important not to be literally translated, but to fit the, to know what the effect is happening in the, in the whole play. So that one, I think he was very, very creative with this translation, because he was trying to recreate the play, not to copy the play. So that was very important for me.
MM:
Right, because part of the, as I'm, as I'm understanding your description of it, part of the effect, part of the rhetoric, part of the strategy of the way that you've written this is, you are intentionally bringing an existing text into a different register. And the transition into this new register has meaning both in terms of what the audience is going to receive, but also the fact that you've done it. Right. The fact that the transition has taken place is part of the meaning of the text that you've produced. And so yeah, it makes sense that, since we have a different relationship to the elements that are coming in, as people living in the US, and as people who are speaking English, that maybe different kinds of translation would have to happen to reproduce that same sort of meaning, right? To have the same effect of, we're moving from this register into this register, like the, the beginning register is probably different. Right? That's my guess. And the ending register, to have the similar meaning, is probably also a little bit different. Is that, is that fair to say?
DE:
Yeah, I think so. I think Marina was incredibly generous, sort of in what, what she sort of entrusted me to do with the translation. It was like, it was so much about, about meaning. And I think also the fact that there was going to be this element of performance that I was thinking about, like, Oh, this isn't just a text that people will read. It's also one that people might experience in a theater. And you know, that sort of, that sort of gave me like a clue as to how to maybe take some more liberties with the grammar and the syntax. So Marina mentioned I think, I felt sort of like in the Spanish that she'd written, there are a lot of long sentences, lots of—more commas, and fragments that certainly exist in English, but I think take on a sort of different meaning. So I wanted to break them up and sort of rearrange them in a way that felt a little bit more conversational, as it, as it was sounding in Spanish, but sort of some English equivalent to that.
MM:
Right. So I want to risk getting into the weeds on this because I think it's worth it. What do you feel was the significance of the longer sentences or the effect of the longer sentences in the original Spanish? And then was the thing that you were keeping the same? What was the effect that you were trying to recreate by then cutting it up into smaller pieces in English? Right? Does that make sense?
DE:
Yeah, it does, and partially, I think that's where my own theater background comes in. And sort of, and sort of approaching this as—while I was aware that it was that it's sort of a hybrid text between prose and dramatic writing, I was letting myself just see it as dialogue. I mean, it's, it's essentially a monologue, and it's going to be performed as a monologue in December in Buenos Aires, so I was thinking: how would an English-speaking actor be able to approach this text? And where is that person going to take pause and take breaks and breath? And, and really sort of thinking in that way, as I do in my own writing about, about speech and about orality, like you talk about. You know, I think in the Spanish, there's, it's a, I don't know, it's a dual effect. I think it depends on the section and the register of the language. But, you know, a run-on sentence that's maybe sort of happening, like in waves, I think, in the Spanish there's, it's, I think, easier to just sort of like find the brakes. And in English, I think maybe we need a little bit more help with that. I don't know. That's just like, I'm just coming up with that right now. But I was like, I think, I think at some points like I can, I can separate these sentences and because sometimes an actor will sort of, will plow through those. And it's, it's more about just like organizing the ideas. I don't know Is that making sense?
MP:
The idea of the monologue is "keep talking," I mean, this kind of that this parallel between the river and the woman talking and keep talking and talking and talking. So when, for example, Derick was asking me, may I put this, I mean, this another kind of letter another kind of tipografía when I, when I do the translation, and we were talking that maybe, No! Maybe it has to be all together. So this effect, it was very important, I mean, these different levels of English and then the sentences stop, a sentence, a stop, but, but to keep, keep talking and keep talking. So this effect that she is with the whole universe alone in her home at six o'clock in the morning, feeling very tired, and probably very feeling very fatal. I mean, and she's the, she's having—maybe we can talk about this "fake" monologue. I mean, this kind of, how the first person is not the first person. It's not really the first person.
DE:
Right. Well, to speak to your first comment, I think what was, yeah, what was important was this effect of, that it was, that it was a propulsive experience, both for the potential actor and for a reader of the text. Because something that we talked about really early on was like that this is, this is not a play. And I mean, that's said pretty plainly like in the text itself—it's the narration, it's the telling of a play. So, this is something that a reader could have an experience with just as a short story. But for that reason, I think, like in English in terms of like, like, what do we define as propulsive, I think is maybe different than it is in Spanish. And there's this sort of like, wanting balance between the propulsive experience for a reader and also for an actor, those might be—those might be different. I'm not sure what the overlap is. But breaking up sentences, having more like short sentences in a row, I think can actually sometimes feel like more of a rush, like, can feel more continuous in English.
MM:
Yeah, I'm seeing what you're saying, because I'm having trouble thinking of specific examples. But it's definitely my experience that sometimes when I read a story, or et cetera, and there's a bunch of long sentences, my reaction to that is that I'm supposed to sort of luxuriate in it, I'm supposed to kind of drift through it, there's a sort of dreamy quality to it, and it can be even a little bit disembodied and, but if there are a bunch of short sentences, that can go a couple of ways, right, like if the rhythm of the way that it's written is really disruptive, where I'm continually being asked to use a lot of words together that are not super-friendly, that cause me to need a lot of breaks, then that can be not a propulsive effect. But if it's been structured carefully that having a lot of a lot of little sentences can, yes, can feel like an encouragement to go go go, right.
MP:
And the speed is different, right? When you read it as short sentences that another and another and another, when is this woman going to stop talking? I mean.
DE:
Something else that I remember being a really important part of our conversations and something that I framed my cover note that I had to bring in for my translation in class was this idea that there's no such thing as the, as the first person, or you're sort of— Marina is sort of questioning this idea through this text, and through the—because the narrator is, is really switching back and forth a lot between speaking from her perspective, and then also sort of narrating like providing stage directions for her own actions. And I thought that was just like those ideas were really striking and, and really informative for me as to like how to sort of bring that forward for the reader and, and not try and hide it. But really just sort of like, like turn it up as I was translating and make sure that that was coming across. So I'm curious, like, if you could talk a little bit more about like those ideas and where they've come from for you.
MP:
The first time we met I was saying to Derick that, for me, when you for example say [in writing], "I am walking down the street, I am seeing the trees, I am watching the car," that's very fake. I mean, because your conscious is not saying, "I am doing this," you are just doing that. No. So you have this, this perception about the reality that is not structured like the first person. It's just feelings under some words and all that. So my proposal was this balance between the first and the third person. The first person is like, it's very fake because you don't see—you don't say "Oh, this is my story, and you tell, and you talk about your own story. You talk about your feelings, but not this structure. When you structure the first person, it's fake. But if you, if we see from the third person, we can tell the story about this woman. So I want, I think that we can go deeper in our writings if we, if we pay attention to the first person and the third person at the same time, because she's telling her story. She's telling her feelings, what happened. And now, she says when she confesses, confesses, for example, is very—is more, truly, I mean, you will feel what she's saying. So that was a bit difficult for the play because of, for example, the director in Buenos Aires, and the actors were saying, "But how we're going to manage this? I mean, how are we going to figure it out?" Because you have this actor, actress, but she's telling her story, but at the same time, she's saying what she's doing. So, again, this overlap means—because it's, for me, it's a writing proposal, that the director and the, and the, and the actor had to, I don't know, solve this problem. Yeah.
MM:
Right. You're saying to them, "Figure it out."
MP:
Yeah, figure it out! And that gives a lot of space for your own creativity.
MM:
Right.
MP:
And this is very important, because writing for me is a dialogue. It's a dialogue with the others, in a very particular dialogue. And this universal dialogue—this is intertextuality, when the other, a lot of quotes are coming in, a lot of tendencies from the others. And you're answering to that, but at the same time, you are speaking with your own people, to the—to your own people. So this kind of dialogue is one of the proposals of the play.
MM:
Yeah, that's, that's really fascinating for me, I mean, I really appreciate any opportunity to make this aspect of the writing, editing, reading that whole, and then conversation afterward about the reading, like anything that makes that more explicit is is really exciting for me, because it's, it's always there, right? But we forget about it, because we have all these conventions that are designed to make it invisible. But of course, when you write something, one, if you're planning to work with a publisher, part of what you're writing, is, you're managing them and corralling them, right? You're figuring out like, how am I—what am I going to get through? What do I have to do in order to successfully negotiate with my eventual publisher, maybe you know who they're going to be, maybe you don't. And then the reader is also going to have to perform the text when it gets to them. Right. And I think that this is really underappreciated the fact that whatever you send to them, they have to work with it in order to create their reading experience, much in the way that actors are going to have to perform the work in order to create the experience for themselves and for the audience. And so for me, it's really interesting whenever I get to see those sorts of negotiations happening explicitly, because they're always implicitly present, but again, we, we forget about them, and we sort of suppress that knowledge.
MP:
And this idea that they play is not a "closed" work. I mean, the books are not closed. O sea, they are continuing this dialogue with, with a lot of situations, I mean, the draft, the different persons, even, especially when you're talking about, set up? I don't know, the play? When you are going to produce the play when you produce the play, the play is alive. I mean, and it's changing a lot. It from the very beginning is one thing, and when you finish you have another thing, so that process and to have another register of that process is very interesting. For example, we have been changing the title a lot of times, and yeah, and Derick changed the title again.
DE:
Yeah, so the title in Spanish is Ladi Macbeth, a las seis de la mañana. But also, I think there was another title, or you described it to me as well as Ladi Macbeth, de madrugada.
MP:
Yeah, means, like, at six, six o'clock in the morning, was the first sentence, and the other is, and during this strange hour, when the night ends and the day is still going to begin—something like that.
DE:
And there's not really an English equivalent of madrugada. Madrugada is like, just really, really early. It's, it's, it's maybe, like, in the middle of the night, but also might be like, incredibly early morning,
MM:
Kinda like the small hours?
DE:
Maybe. Yeah.
MM:
I mean, small hours has other connotations, though, right? It sounds like—sounds like this one has...Is there—is there like a feeling embedded in the idea of like...
MP:
Yeah, it's an exist—existent, feeling existential, I mean, existential feeling. I mean, these are words that this is not precisely one time. It's when you—how you feel about that.
DE:
There was like those two titles in Spanish. One was very specifically at six in the morning, which is more technical, and then the other was de madrugada. So what I sort of settled on, I mean, it's, it may change, but the current title for my English translation uses the phrase "at an ungodly hour," because I feel like there is a lot of—There is sort of room in, in both this text and in Macbeth for, for that sort of phrasing, for this like, this existential sort of maybe like, hour of day that's like conjuring these feelings about, about spirit and about like ghostliness.
MP:
Yeah, this time, this very not precise time is very important in Macbeth. I mean, the way this appears, and these feelings appear and madness appears, you know, and the ghost, the ghost in Macbeth are very important too. So it's this strange hour, let's say "Lady Macbeth at the strange hour." Yeah, another thing is the writing about "Lady," for example. I write it how it sounds in Spanish, but the English word. I mean, you know, in English is L A, D, and i griega (Y in Spanish), and I write in Spanish how it sounds in Spanish. So he has to do that work.
DE:
So I have it written as instead of L-A-D-Y, I have it written as L-E--D-I. Which if you, if you are a Spanish speaker, you're going to pronounce that as "Lady."
MM:
Yeah, yeah.
MP:
We are writing the orality. We are writing the orality, how it sounds. I mean, it's a phonetic proposal.
DE:
Because the character is also an interpreter at this fishing company. There's, there's, I mean, there's room for that. Like, it's not just about the—that's us like approaching both the form and the content of your original text, which I think is something else that I'm thinking about from what you've mentioned, is, you know, seeing this as a performance text and what you described about about self-narration and these issues that come up in the rehearsal room for the director, like, you know, well, I mean, what are we going to do about her telling us like, I mean, she's speaking in the first person, and then she's just, she's saying, "I'm just going to tell you what happens." And then she says, "She raises her head abruptly," and she's referring to herself. So I think a very fascinating question arises, like, there are already so many dimensions in the language, and bringing this text to—like to stage, there's so much space for negotiation in what that looks like. So I mean, does the actress who says, "She raises her head abruptly," referring to herself, raise her head abruptly in that moment or not? Because she doesn't have to.
MM:
Mono—monólogo—monologue is fake! I insist because it's a fake, the first person, is a fake. We have the first person, the second person, and the third person at the same time. And that's, yeah, this is a story about a woman who wants to be Macbeth, but she works a lot. I think in Buenos Aires she wants to be, she really feels that she wants to be Macbeth. I mean, she, she's ready for that role. But she works a lot. She's very direct, she has a lot of emotional story behind her, so she's trying to, to, to do that role at six o'clock in the morning in her house.
MM:
In a March 2023 interview with Poetripiados,
MP:
Yeah, in Ciudad Juárez.
MM:
Yeah, you talked about some of the challenges that are faced by people publishing in Argentina right now. And, you know, in particularly that there were some, you know, international presses, and some writers that you see over and over again, sort of well placed in store windows, things like that. And then there are people that are doing work, maybe in self publishing, or with smaller presses that you're really excited about. And, and, you know, you're talking about the challenges of trying to do the work of making art while living this busy life and having to do all this other work too just to get by, made me, made me think of that. So I'm interested in just what the context is that you're dealing with right now, as a working writer, trying to trying to make ends meet while you do your work.
MP:
You know, it's a very interesting question. And thank you very much for that. Because one of the most important topics for me, I mean, being a writer is the job. You say the job, right? The job, the job. I have this idea, it's just a joke, that it means that I don't think that we don't—that we have, of course, everyone can write about what they want. But my position, my idea is, I don't have to write about love stories. I mean, we have this tradition about talking about feelings, talking about love stories. And for me, one of the most important things is the job, how we are going to eat, how we are going to develop, how are we going to—our time and our talent—how we manage with all that.
And of course, we are living in very harsh conditions. Not only me. I'm a privileged—I mean, in a privileged situation. But I mean, if you go to América Latina, to Buenos Aires, the people are working a lot. So how much time do we have for, for doing our plays? For doing our writing, this very, voluntad [willpower]. I mean, we, if you want to be a writer in América Latina, you have to—really have a strong desire because everything is against you. I mean, the family is going to say, "Oh, what are you going to do? You are going to be a, you know, starving in two months." And, and so we are trying to deal with this, to manage. How are we going to create our, our working? How are we going to write? What are we going to write about? So the job for me is very important.
This girl is, and how Derick was saying is interpretación—interpreter? Yeah, in a company. And she works twelve hours. So when she finishes she feels very, very tired. So this tiring about doing the things tiring her whole life. For example, she starts doing shopping list about she's going to buy milk, or she's going to buy yogurt, with her pay, and then she's going to do, to buy some meat. So she's always thinking about the money, and how she's going to, to figure it out. Not sure how she's going to manage with this money. Yeah, I think that the question was about publishing, but I want to say that!
MM:
I mean, it is about publishing, because that's, that's part of the work that you do, right. That everybody has to do. I mean, you know, this is my day job, this is what I do, so that I can make ends meet, so I can do the writing that I want to do that will eventually give me some money, but not enough to live on, right?
MP:
No, of course.
MM:
And that's the same sort of situation that I assume that you're dealing with, and that everybody who's, who's working creatively is dealing with so yeah, it is, it is a publishing question. But it's also just a life question. It's, what are you—what are you doing?
MP:
Yeah, and the question is, how are we, are we writing in, in our cities? I mean, how much time do we have, how are the debates? Where it's coming, where money comes from, I mean, if you publish, how much money they're going to give you for that, I don't know, for the short story, or how you are asking for—having money for the play. So there are a lot of interesting questions about the conditions that we are working. And, but the whole story about writing is, I mean, all the writers have their jobs, and they always say, No, I want time for writing. So that's very, very, I mean, it's a common typical topic for us.
DE:
Would you say in Argentina, that there's like, like, what is the work culture like? Like, is it something that the more you work, like, the more respected like, is it something that people—people cling to? Is it sort of a part of identity? Is it like, you know, the more hours you work, like, the more proud you should be of that, like, what—I'm curious what that—what those conversations are like.
MP:
Yeah, and this, this idea, this classic, I don't know, typical idea about that, writing is not a work, or either, I don't know, acting or training about being an actor is not a work. No, obviously, it takes a lot of time and your whole body, your whole existence. So it's a big effort. I mean, we are all doing this big effort. So we have to rethink about what is work and what, how are we going to develop.
MM:
This makes an interesting potential transition for me and one of your other major topics. One of your other concerns, which is boxing in particular. I don't know if you have an interest in like fight sports, generally, if it's if it's mainly boxing.
MP:
Yes, you know, I think that there are two topics that I have been thinking about my whole life or something. One is how the body is linked with writing, I mean, because I think that I understand my writing because of my body, and I understand my body because of my writing. Because of the words I mean, I cannot make it, I cannot separate them. I cannot feel that, "Okay, one thing is body and the other thing is words." For me, they are not two, ah, two items that separate. So how they link? And it's very interesting, because words cannot talk about, I mean, this deep body, deep body experience. Gor example, we cannot say, "Oh, how are you going to write"—I don't know—"about dreams?" We don't know, how do we, how to write about dreams, how to write about, I don't know, how to write, how to write about drugs, how to—there's a lot of experience of the body, that the word, I mean, the word, the talk, the writing cannot talk about. So it's interesting to think about it. It's a failure from the very beginning. So how are we going to manage with this? And the other is this historical dimension, this political dimension, how we link it with the fiction? I mean, how the context is—provides the conditions for the story. I mean, the story is set in a certain time and in a certain place, but it's not—It's not because I don't know, it's a joke or because I I want that. It's because it provides the condition. The story only can be set in an—in some place and in some time, and that's very important. That's not a background. It's not a curtain, you know, it's the ground of the story. It's very important piece of the story. The context.
MM:
Yeah, yeah.
MP:
So body and context, and they are all working here in the play. No?
MP:
Right, well, and you—So you've talked about how in past conversations how boxing is a dialogue in the same way that you've talked about writing being a dialogue to date. And I was thinking about that too, because boxing is a kind of work right? It is something that is—we don't even call it boxing unless it's done professionally. We call it fighting if it's done outside of the ring. But, but boxing is a very interesting kind of work because the goal is explicitly to go in there and destroy someone else's body and your own, which is like something that work does generally but we have this sort of like fantasy or this idea in how we talk about work, that work is going to make you strong, that it's going to, that it's going to take care of you, that it makes you healthy to work, right? So I I'm having trouble framing the exact question I want to ask here, but I'm curious about how you think about writing and work and boxing and the, the sort of destruction of the body. Like how these things are connected for you.
MP:
Boxing, yeah, I understand that when you say that it's a violent activity, but it's one of the less violent activities in this sense: you have rules, you have to, I don't know, an appointment, with that time in that moment, and you are going to fight against a person that is ready for that fight. It's not the same if you are in the street, and the people are now without rules. So this kind of having rules for the sports is one of the most—this frame, I mean, makes the sport like kind of encounter more than a fighter in the in the bad meaning of fighting, you know?
MM:
Well, and there's, and there's a way in that description that it feels less violent to me than the interactions you might have with the factory that you work for, for example—where the timing is not as set and the things, the bad things that happened to you are not things that you've had warning about that you're going to train for.
MP:
Exactly. To be trained is very important. Yeah, to be trained. I mean, you're not going to, I mean, boxing is not obligatory, it's not mandatory. It's not that the—"Oh, okay, so I'm going to give you a candy so you can go to the ring." No, you have been training for that for months, and you have been ready, your mind is ready for that, for months. So this feeling that we have rules and these rules are—provides the encounter. So then the encounters allow that it's not a violent situation that you are going to kill the other, or you have different levels of training. Or, and of course, we are talking about how the referee has to stop the fight if the fight goes, I don't know, lost control. But this training about the body and this effort is like I want, I don't, I don't think that—I don't think they are the same activity. But when you're writing, you work a lot, even when your body doesn't know about it. I mean, you work a lot and you can work twelve hours, we are working twelve hours. So this, this is a kind of training too, and I'm very interested because I, first of all, because I love boxing. I have been watching boxing since I am a kid. And again from a family that doesn't, doesn't like boxing, it's like, "Why are you looking at that?" But something there talks to me. So I feel involved in the—in the activity.
And, and my question is: how are we going to talk about boxing? How? The narrative? The history about boxing. Because, you know, you see a fight, and some people say, Oh, it was very interesting, and then other people say, Oh, it was very boring. So, well, we are talking about this narrative about the body. And we are again in the play, you know, we are talking about the bodies. How are we talking about the bodies? How are we talking about our feelings? Or how the body feels with our words, with our frame, I mean. I think that's my key. That's what I am interested in.
DE:
Sounds like what you're describing—there are so many elements of performance in boxing, what you described about all of the rules, the conventions around it. There's consent between the fighters, their uniforms, or, or "costumes" depending on how you look at it! So that—what you just said, like that, even that boxing, that it speaks to you that it's, it's this, it's this debate that's happening. It's this negotiation between two people. So it makes so much sense to me what you described about writing being something that's embodied, that there's this—that sort of—our physical selves are in conversation, and that frame of language feels so important in just interpreting and thinking about your writing.
MP:
Yeah, of course, and the clothes, the escenario [set], I mean, why when the when the fighters came in, they were like showing themselves? It's a theater, it's like a play. I mean, you can see it as play. And, and there's another interesting thing happening when you start thinking about female boxers and they are very, very, I don't know, masculine male, when they are inside the ring, but when they came out of the ring, I mean, you feel you see them with—for example, they have their painted nails or they have heels and were there with the children. So these feminists, feminine and masculine balance, is playing all time. So they're roles, so how roles are doing our work in there. So it's a very interesting—they are awakening characters that what I am really interested in because they are not—you cannot say, "Okay, this character is like an object." I mean, this man is playing that this is boxing like this, or this woman is boxing like this, and that's all. It's very complex what is happening there. And if you, if you train, I mean boxing when, when you, when you are not a professional can be very, like a kind of therapy tool. I mean, hitting, hitting is... I don't know how to say, it's very, I don't know, please, please.
MM:
It's better, it's cathartic.
MP:
Yeah yeah yeah.
DE:
Like a punching bag.
DE:
Yeah. A punching bag. At least like dancing, when you find a partner and you dance, well, it's the same with boxing. And you can, you can do all your exercise without being hurt. I mean, we have your, you have your protection.
DE:
And even the fact that you're wearing gloves like these giant...
MP:
Yeah, it's because of the other. Not to hurt the other. Because the gloves are not to hurt the other. If you have a bare knuckle, you are going to hurt his face. But if not, gloves are for that protection. Yeah, it's a very protected activity. But it has, like bad, eh, mala promoción, bad promotion. Yeah, but it's a, it's a very, I don't know, there are, and there are a lot of clubs doing this social work with boxing. So there's another talk, and it's very interesting how it works. I mean, how it works, how because you can frame your violence. And if you can frame your violence, your your life will be better. And the same happens with writing: you can frame your feeling. You can put in order and, I don't know how to say, organize your feelings, organize your, and that makes you a better a better person in the sense that you are going to feel better. That's why I believe in art. I mean that because we can learn empathy. We can learn how the sensibility—we can learn how to deal with our feelings and our stories. Yeah, sports and arts. You know, they are, they are very linked because of the body.
MM:
I have like one or two questions to wrap up. Is there like one thing that you want to ask that you haven't gotten to?
DE:
Well, it might be too late. I'm really curious to hear more about— you mentioned that you, I think you said you lived in an artist co-op when you were twenty.
MP:
When I was young. (Laughs) In Buenos Aires in 2001 was a very big crisis that we had three presidents in one week. And it was, yeah, I was twenty-three years old. I was studying history because of this worry about how history and fictions works. And then suddenly the city collapsed. I mean, collapsed for probably one month. And then we're, and we were asking, I mean, the people were in the streets the whole day and the whole night, and we are having a lot of long debates. And we were close to the house palace government, and the police was there. So it was very rough. And it was very important for my generation. I mean, I was a student. And we start thinking, What are we going to do with this city and with obviously with this country? And there's a consequence that it was very interesting about the social work. We all start doing a lot of social work. It was like having conscious about what was happening, and our own history. We came in from the dictatorship, and then they were against England in 1982. So we have that history.
And then suddenly, we were twenty years old. So I went to live in a cooperative theater. It was in a very popular neighborhood of Buenos Aires and we were nine probably, living there. Actors, the director, and actress, and escenógrafo [scenic designer]. And I was the writer but—I was the writer but I didn't write drama, plays. I was just the writer. I was working at the sports magazine in Buenos Aires, but I learned there that there is one picture as how a writer must be. For example, Spain, say you have to be in these newspapers, you have to publish in these publishers, you have to say these things. And for me was, well, for me writing is a practice. It's a social practice. That means that I incurred a kind of, a way of being a writer, but I am thinking myself what kind of writer I want to be in this context. So that's my experience in that theater was very important. Because of that, I realized that orality was important for writing, I was very young, and this community sense of writing, this talking about dialogue, talking about draft, which are more, are important or as important as the final version, you know. So it was like, living writing. And yes.
MP:
So you were in this artists' co-op, sort of as it sounds like, like the resident writer of the group for this theater. Is this theater company—I mean, so you're literally living there, right?
MP:
Seven years, yeah.
DE:
With these other people? Look, I'm curious, like, what kind of artistic or professional or financial support are you receiving in this position? In a space like that. How was, I mean, I'm curious about like, how that's, how that's set up? Like, how you came to live there, like, how it happened?
MP:
Yeah. Well, it's a nice story. It was an old factory. And the director, his name is Eduardo Pérez Winter, basically, I mean, rebuilt the building for being a theater. But we were all working in our things, and we were all living there, because rents, ah, you know, to pay the rent was very expensive. So it was better to live there. And, and I was, I mean, I had my boyfriend, and we decided living there with this group. But this was a very important experience for me, because it was a collective experience about writing. And, and ah, for example, I woke up on Saturdays on Sunday, very late. And I was listening to the—the essay, how you say? When they—when the actors are...
DE:
Rehearsals?
MP:
How you say?
DE:
Rehearsal.
MP:
Rehearsal. So you listen to the rehearsals and you start thinking, and you, you—you can watch all how the day was changed since all time because on Saturday, on Sunday, we were, I don't know, eating together, working together, talking all the time, obviously. And it was, this man Eduardo Pérez Winter found this play. I mean, with three man, it was a girl, Laura Gonzales Miedan, Antonio Gris, that he came from Spain, he decided he wants to live in Buenos Aires because Buenos Aires has a very interesting environment, the theater environment. So I learned a lot from them. I mean, I learned a lot of these kinds of community that they were, we all have our own jobs, but we'd meet at that house. It's a very big house. It was an old factory. And we do this, and they made a lot of activities with the neighborhood. For example, they—their movies were on the, on the, on the walls of the building. So the people came, or for example, they rang the bell and they say, What are you doing here? Why are you all the time—What are you shouting all day? Oh, we are doing theater here. But it's very, very, I don't know, common in Buenos Aires. I mean, there's a lot of places, very small places that the people meet and they start doing acting and writing plays. It's very interesting.
MM:
I love: Why are you shouting? We're doing theater!
MP:
Exactly. Please don't call the police! Happens a lot of the time. Why the guy is shouting? And the other side: Do I have to call the police? No, please don't call the police. We are talking a play here. And, uh, you know, Saturday night when I came back, I don't know from, I don't know, I went for a dinner, then I came back. And I have to be like, very silent to go to my room because the play was going downstairs. You know, so when is this going to finish? I mean, yeah, it was a very interesting experience. But I mean, I was like, in a lateral position—I was the writer, I was, I mean, they were the crazy men doing things with their bodies. I was out of that, but yeah. I learned a lot of them.
MM:
We're near the end of the residency now, which is a sad thing to think, but maybe also exciting in some ways. I'm sure there's some folks you'd like to see again that don't live in Iowa. But if you don't mind us asking, what have you been working on here?
MP:
Oh, well, a lot of things honestly, because I have the time to think about my writing. So I have been working a lot before coming here. So when I came here, I decide to think and do less stuff and think. I did my research at the library. You have a wonderful library about boxing, because the archive of boxing here in the states is very, very interesting. And I found a lot of books and a lot of material. It was wonderful. And I have been working on a short novel. And the main character is a female boxer. I mean, it's, it's a girl, a very young girl who is very angry because in her family no one' lets her—allows her to talk. She wants to talk a lot and the family says, No, please shut up. So she got angry and she went to, to like a side of the town. And I'm trying to write the whole story of the town from the press, and from these character who is always at the side and angry because they don't let her talk about...
MM:
That sounds really interesting. Did you get to meet somebody here who boxed or?
MP:
Yeah, Mendoza, her name was Mendoza, and I interviewed her. It was before coming. One month before coming, but then then I go to Ecor Boxing, it's a place, a club where you can do your training. And yes, but honestly, I don't have much time for my training. So yeah, yeah. But I'm always, I mean, thinking about it.
MM:
What is one really interesting thing that you've learned while you've been here?
MP:
it's happened so quickly. Lots of things happening, but the exchange, the dialogue with the other writers. It was very, very interesting to try to understand—to understand, to know, what they are saying, what they are writing, how they are thinking, writing. That was, for me, one of the best dialogues. We came from very different places, but we have these de-colonial processes that they are very similar. So how, how first of all languages, how the language is managed with this broad historical process, and the dialogues, what it is important, why are you writing this? Where do you want to publish? What kind of writer do you want to be? So that answer, that question and that answer, I think that it was the most important. What kind of writer I want to be here. Because there's a lot of possibilities, and I strongly believe that dialogue is a construction. I mean, you can, you can build things with dialogue. So that dialogue for me was very, very important. And obviously I cannot have a dialogue if I'm staying in Buenos Aires. I mean, I have to be here, live with, and talk the whole day.
MM:
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us.
MP:
Thank you very much, Mike. Thank you very much, Derick, for all your work and your patience, and thank you very much for for this interview. I really enjoyed it.
[music: "Gymnopédie No. 1 - DoGBeaT Remix" by DoGBeaT]
MM:
Say the World: an International Writing Podcast is a production of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. IWP programming is primarily funded by the University of Iowa, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State, with additional funding provided by organizations like the Doris Duke Foundation, as well as donors like you. If you'd like to donate to the IWP, go to bit.ly/iwp-support. Links to further information and additional credits for this episode are in the show notes.
