Sardine
Sardine
$20.00
In stock
About the Book
Writing for the first time in Galician, Miriam Reyes crosses the oblique, multi-dimensional passages between Galicia and Venezuela, where she migrated at the age of eight. In Sardine, Reyes’ frustrations using her maternal grandfather’s native tongue become confrontations with the insufficiency of language itself, as a means to contain experience, meaning, and the self. Sardine lives in the ruptures in space and time forced open by migration and offers memory as a yoke for our discordant selves.
Author
Miriam Reyes
studied Literature at the Central University of Venezuela and graduated in Hispanic Philology at the University of Barcelona. She is the author of several poetry collections including Espejo negro (DVD), Bella durmiente, finalist for the 19th Hiperión Poetry Prize (Hiperión), Desalojos (Hiperión), Haz lo que te digo (Bartleby), Prensado en frío (Malasangre), Sardiña (Chan da pólvora) and Con (La bella Varsovia), for which she received the 2025 National Poetry Prize of Spain. In addition to being a poet, Reyes is an editor and translator into Spanish. She is the editor and translator of the anthology of contemporary Galician poetry Punto de ebullición (FCE). She translated from the Catalan El guante de plástico rosa by Dolors Miquel (Marisma), and has also translated Daniel Salgado’s Huelga general from the Galician (Marisma). Since the year 2000 Reyes has been combining poetry with other arts and technologies.
Translator
Laura Cesarco Eglin
is a poet and translator from Uruguay. Cesarco Eglin translates from the Spanish, Portuguese, Portuñol, and Galician. She is the translator of claus and the scorpion by the Galician author Lara Dopazo Ruibal (co•im•press), longlisted for both the 2023 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and the 2023 National Translation Award in Poetry. Cesarco Eglin is also the translator of Of Death. Minimal Odes by the Brazilian author Hilda Hilst (co•im•press), winner of the 2019 Best Translated Book Award in Poetry. She co-translated from the Portuñol Fabián Severo’s Night in the North (Eulalia Books). She is also the translator of The Mistaken Place of Things by Gabriela Aguirre (Eulalia Books, 2024). Cesarco Eglin is the author of three collections of poetry and four chapbooks, including Between Gone and Leaving–Home (dancing girl press, 2023), Time/Tempo: The Idea of Breath (PRESS 254, 2022), and Reborn in Ink, translated by Catherine Jagoe and Jesse Lee Kercheval (The Word Works, 2020).Cesarco Eglin is the co-founding editor and publisher of Veliz Books.
Praise
Excerpt
from PRATEADA GORXA / VENTRE
SILVER THROAT / WOMB
e digo eu / digo / eu
o que non fun quen de facer coa lingua da miña nai fareino coa túa
aínda que fale con dificultade
a dificultade é parte desta historia
o coitelo da lingua sen afiar estragando a carne toda
os beizos a abrirse e pecharse no mesmo son inútiles á hora de significar
mais óllame / olla para min
tan descalciña pola area coma a túa rianxeira
and i say / i say / i
what i wasn’t able to do with my mother’s tongue i’ll do with yours
even if i speak with difficulty
the difficulty is part of this story
the unsharpened knife of the tongue ruins the flesh entirely
the lips opening and closing for the same sound useless when it comes to meaning
but look at me / look my way
as “barefoot in the sand” as your “rianxeira”