Spit Temple

Cecilia Vicuña

Translated by Rosa Alcalá

ART, FEMINISM, PERFORMANCE, POETICS, TRANSLATION  |  $20 $18

November 2012
Read an excerpt

Crimen Lechero / Milk Crime

Bogotá, 1979

The Colectivo de Acciones de Arte (C.A.D.A) in Chile invited me to participate in a project called Para No Morir de Hambre en el Arte (To Not Die of Hunger in the Arts) that would be realized simultaneously in Santiago, Toronto, and Bogotá. At the time Bogotá was enduring el crimen lechero (the milk crime), where merchants added paint to milk in order to increase profits, resulting in the death of 1,920 children. And the government was doing nothing about it. Around the city, I announced on posters the spilling of a glass of milk in front of the Quinta de Simón Bolívar. Twelve people attended. I spilled a glass of white paint on the sidewalk and wrote the poem on the pavement.

She doesn’t “refer” to baskets, she gets us to pull the very reeds for the basket.

Rodrigo Toscano

The first overview of the work of this seminal multi-disciplinary artist, SPIT TEMPLE collects texts and transcriptions of Cecilia Vicuña’s uncategorizable improvised performances, which combine singing, movement, chants, and stories. Also included are a critical introduction by Rosa Alcalá, a poetic memoir by Vicuña addressing her life in performance, images from Vicuña’s extensive personal archive, and response pieces by Maria Damon, Linda Duke, Nada Gordon, Jena Osman, Kenneth Sherwood, Juliana Spahr, Dennis Tedlock, Edwin Torres, and Rodrigo Toscano.

Spit Temple was a runner-up for the 2013 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.

First printing, 2012. Second Printing, 2014. Third Printing, 2018.

About the Author

Cecilia Vicuña is a Chilean poet, artist, and filmmaker. The author of twenty poetry books published in Europe, Latin America and the U.S., she performs and exhibits her work widely. A precursor of conceptual, impermanent art and the improvisatory oral performance, her work deals with the interactions between language, earth and textiles. Her most recent books are Kuntur Ko, El Zen Surado, and Saborami, (Chain Links). Chanccani Quipu, an artist book, was recently published by Granary Books. She co-edited the Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry. Since 1980 she divides her time between Chile and New York.

Praise

Vicuña's work, at its very essence, is ‘a way of remembering’—as if exile and recall joined to unravel an ‘autobiography in debris;’ as one personal story within a larger narrative.

Roberto Tejada

If the “everyone-in-everyone” has been a NY super-trope explored from Walt Whitman to Garcia Lorca to Bruce Andrews (scores of other poets would equally apply here) then Cecilia Vicuña can properly be said to be in that line. But more than “lines” “tropes” “methods” or “traditions” Vicuña’s poetry is concerned with the journey from “every-word-in-every-word” to “everyone-in-everyone.” "…. In a manner of speaking, she doesn’t “refer” to baskets, she gets us to pull the very reeds for the basket. She doesn’t “refer” to the English, or Spanish, or the many native languages such as Quechua that appear in her work, she summons them one unto the other—through concerted action, as through our live and on-site comprehension of them.

Rodrigo Toscano

Just as she revives the older tradition of troubadours and shamans, her work reinvents its own texts to face the living complex of circumstances in situ for each performance. She is tuned to the vibratory pitch of the room, the humming energy field where every person’s mental theatre is involved in a communal matrix that establishes a collective one.

Will Cordeiro

About the Translator

Rosa Alcalá is the author of three books of poetry, most recently MyOTHER TONGUE (Futurepoem). The recipient of an NEA Translation Fellowship and runner-up for a PEN Translation Award, she edited and translated Spit Temple: The Selected Performances of Cecilia Vicuña (Ugly Duckling Presse). She is also the editor and co-translator of Cecilia Vicuña: New & Selected Poems (Kelsey Street Press, forthcoming). She is Associate Professor in the Department of Creative Writing & Bilingual MFA Program at the University of Texas-El Paso.

In the News

Links

Cecilia Vicuña’s Website

Darkness–Translation–Migration at The Poetry Foundation

An interview with Rosa Alcalá on poetry, translation, and the transcription of Cecilia Vicuña’s performances on the Commonplace podcast

“Knot Writing: The poetry of Cecilia Vicuña’s soft sculptures,” an essay by John Vincler on The Poetry Foundation’s website

Publication Details

ISBN: 978-1-937027-03-2
Trade Paperback
Perfect-bound. 352 pp, 6 x 8 in
Publication Date: November 01 2012
Distribution: Coach House Books via Publishers Group Canada (Canada), Inpress Books (UK), SPD
Series: Dossier