New Lit on the Block :: Telephone

Editors Sharmila Cohen & Paul Legault have brought about a playfully serious new lit mag: Telephone – “like the children’s game in which phrases change as you whisper them from one person to the next.” The publication features four to five poems from one foreign poet in each issue, which are then translated roughly ten times by multiple different poets and translators. There are no rules about how each poem should be translated and Cohen and Legault solicit a variety of interpretations.

The first issues features orginal poems by Uljana Wolf which are then translated by Mary Jo Bang, Priscilla Becker, Susan Bernofsky, Macgregor Card, Isabel Fargo Cole, Timothy Donnelly, Megan Ewing, Robert Fitterman, John Gallaher, Matthea Harvey, Christian Hawkey, Erín Moure, Eugene Ostashevsky, Nathaniel Otting, Craig Santos Perez, Dr. Ute Schwartz, and Uwe Weiß.

Interested in playing? Sharmila Cohen says, “In general, we select and individually solicit all of the translators. That being said, we have an open door policy to suggestions with regard to interesting translators and foreign poets.”