Contributions by David Shook
David Shook David Shook grew up in Mexico City before studying endangered languages in Oklahoma and poetry at Oxford. His collection of poems Our Obsidian Tongues, longlisted for the 2013 Dylan Thomas Prize, is available from Eyewear Publishing. He served as Translator in Residence at the Poetry Parnassus in London, where he premiered his covertly filmed documentary Kilometer Zero, featuring Equatorial Guinean poet Marcelo Ensema Nsang. His translations include Mario Bellatin's Shiki Nagaoka, Oswald de Andrade's "Cannibal Manifesto," and Roberto Bolaño's manifesto "Leave Everything, Again." He lives in Los Angeles, where he edits molossus and Phoneme Media. Photo: Crispin Hughes.
Writing Lessons for the Blind and Deaf (excerpt)
from the future Spanish of Mario Bellatin
translated by David Shook
Josué’s mother was blind. Not always. She lost her eyes one at a time, starting at about age 49, in people years. That’s seven years old for a Chihuahua, which, though a little early, isn’t exceptionally unusual. The process began with a slight milkiness at the perimeter of her bulging left eye. Aw, she’s got cataracts, the show circuit groomers cooed. Know-nothings with no creativity, no curiosity. She had uveitis. Her ophthalmologist explained the disease by making a drawing on a whiteboard: tiny triangles, which she explained were the eye’s pumps, shedding off the eye’s regular waste emissions—mostly a solution of minerals and salts. The regular wastes were represented by tiny squares that looked like grains of rough-cut salt, maybe Himalayan. The ophthalmologist prescribed two medicines: … Read More »
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