Translator and educator Nancy Morales didn’t expect a former student’s invitation to join a literary translation project to blossom into a multi-book endeavor.
But it did—and over the next several years, Morales and her former student, John Johnson, joined by the poet Terry Ehret, began creating Plagios, a comprehensive trilogy of dual-language volumes that bring the complete works of Mexican poet Ulalume González de León into English for the first time.
Johnson remembered Morales using poetry in class to connect students more deeply with language, and asked if she was interested in translating some of González de León’s work. Her previous translation experience had been primarily academic, but this project would be an artistic endeavor. Meanwhile, Ehret was already regularly using González de León’s work in her creative writing classes. She had first read the poet’s work as a graduate student at San Francisco State.
“I was intrigued by the way [González de León] combined a highly sensual language with philosophical and scientific diction,” says Ehret, who often used the Mexican poet’s series of prose poems, Anatomy of Love, in her classes. When she looked for more of González de León’s poems in English, she found there was very little and ended up trying her own hand at translation.
So when Johnson contacted Ehret for recommendations on where he and Morales might publish their first translations, Ehret joined the project.
“The [three volume project] was Terry’s idea,” says Johnson. “I called her one day after Nancy and I had translated a few of UGL’s poems, to ask if she’d help us get them published in a journal somewhere,” he recalls. “How many poems did Terry have in mind? All of them. And along with publishing in journals, Terry suggested that we publish all of them together in a three-volume, bilingual edition.”
The project was shaped by a commitment to preserving González de León’s voice while making her poetry accessible to a new audience. It would also be the first time that the Mexican poet’s collected published work would be available in a dual-language format.
“John’s attention to Spanish grammar and idiom, as well as the original texts that González de León borrowed or plagiarized, were invaluable contributions to our work,” says Ehret. “And Nancy has always provided grounding in the Spanish text, and her bilingual talents have helped us craft our translations with sensitivity and accuracy.”
Ehret’s own contribution to the project was rooted in her knowledge of the language theory and philosophy González de León studied at the Sorbonne, the poet’s feminist aesthetics and her experiments with text.
The trio worked together for several years before they were able to procure the translation rights from the Mexican publisher of the poems, along with an NEA translation fellowship. Next, they approached Sixteen Rivers Press with their three-volume book proposal.
Johnson worked with Morales and Ehret from 2012 to 2021 to produce the first two volumes, but bowed out of the project after the second volume.
“After eight years, I decided to leave the translating of Volume III to Terry and Nancy, but continued to work behind the scenes on the book production process,” explains Johnson. So from 2022 on, Morales and Ehret continued together, and Plagios/Plagiarisms, Volume Three is the final result.
González de León, a Uruguayan-born poet who became a well-known literary figure in Mexico, is known for her radical experimentation with language. That made the work exciting—but also complex—to translate.
The poet—a powerful presence in Latin American literature—wrote during the Latin American literary boom that gave rise to magical realism, where she stood out for her feminist voice and linguistic risks. She made her mark in Mexico, enjoying collaborations with Octavio Paz and a friendship with Elena Poniatowska, who’s considered Mexico’s grand dame of letters.
“Ulalume is a unique writer and poet; she not only borrowed from other poets but felt liberated in creating her own language, sounds, rhythms and grammatical demands,” Morales says. “In this way, she can be found to be elusive, challenging, erratic, fun, light and requires a lot from her translators. However, I also believe this is what makes her so current, fresh and edgy.”
González de León was known for playing with language and layered meanings. “We had to be very creative and thoughtful in our choices,” says Morales.
That inventiveness made many translation decisions particularly delicate. Poetry is so much about rhythm, sound and nuance, that there’s a desire to stay true to the original meaning but also have the translation resonate musically in the spirit of the poem.
“The rhythms of Spanish aren’t the rhythms of English,” explains Ehret. “Nancy and I brought our areas of expertise to each translation, but on many of the poems, we had help from several bilingual poets and translators: Stalina Villarreal, Christina Lloyd and Jabez Churchill. Ultimately, Nancy and I would sit with our translations for days or weeks, listening to its music, trying different synonyms, different syntax, different phrasings, till the language felt emotionally satisfying.”
Of course, collaboration also means respectful disagreement.
“We initially were a group of three with three different voices, styles and even approaches to translation, to Ulalume, to poetry and to the direction of the project,” says Morales. “However, I believe that ultimately, we wanted to move forward, create a beautiful poem and be as respectful and kind to each other while also being in concert with Ulalume [González de León]. I truly believe that her voice guided many of our choices.”
“[The conversations] were at times difficult and humbling,” says Johnson of working on the first two volumes. “The experience of working collaboratively always led to a better understanding of the poems and, I believe, better translations.”
Translation is a living process. And over the years since they began the project, there has been growth and progress in the translators’ skills, confidence and familiarity with the work. Morales says that she’s grown as a person, translator, poet and writer because of this project.
“I definitely feel more confident—and with that I’m willing to take more chances,” adds Morales, who believes that bringing González de León’s work into English fills a critical gap. This allows English-speakers to discover another influential voice among female Latin American writers.
“She’s an incredible writer,” adds Morales, explaining how the poet was an advocate for political and social issues during her time, representing women as one of the first Latin American feminists.
Ehret agrees that the work of poets like González de León is critical. She notes, “At a time when the rich diversity of our culture is being systematically erased, it’s important that we embrace other languages, to read beyond our borders, and beyond the monolinguistic paradigm.
”A reading from ‘Plagios,’ as part of a 16 Rivers Press poetry event, begins at 6pm, Wednesday, May 28, at Readers Books, 130 East Napa St., Sonoma. More information at sixteenrivers.org.
