Join us for an evening with acclaimed Afro-Brazilian poet Salgado Maranhão and translator Alexis Levitin. Their third collaboration, Palávora, will be released shortly by Lavender Ink / Diálogos.

Alexis Levitin’s translation of the Afro-Brazilian poet Salgado Maranhão succeeds in negotiating the quirky experimental richness of Maranhão’s Pre-Columbian, Amazonian, and Yoruba influences with his traditional rhymed lyrics and jazz-like syncopations. Levitin skillfully alerts us to the presence of a complex and offbeat poet whose work merits a wide audience. —Colette Inez

Salgado Maranhão’s Palávora is a fierce, metaphysical testament and testimony to the power of the human spirit and the necessity for the world of the poet and poetry, “expressing a language of within / printed on a horizon of beyond…”. One of South America’s leading poets, Maranhão’s music is masterfully translated here by one of the foremost practitioners of that art in English, Alexis Levitin. Here is essential, brilliant poetry. —Mark Statman

Brazil’s northeast is a dry and ancient land. Little visited, it has come to be known outside the country for producing some if its best writing. Alexis Levitin has given us a perfect English rendering of Salgado Maranhão’s deft expression of the tonality of this people and land. —Gregory Rabassa

Salgado Maranhão (above left) was born in the impoverished interior of Maranhão, in the northeast of Brazil, where he lived with his mother as an illiterate field worker till the age of fifteen. From these humble beginnings, he has risen to a position as one of the leading poets of his country and probably the leading voice representing the Afro-Brazilian experience. He won the prestigious Prêmio Jabuti in 1999 with his fourth poetry collection, Mural of Winds. In 2011, The Color of the Word won the Brazilian Academy of Letters highest poetry award. In 2014, the Brazilian PEN Club chose his collection Mapping the Tribe as best book of poetry for the year. In 2015 the Brazilian Writers Union gave him first prize, again for The Color of the Word. In 2016, he was awarded the Jabuti for his book Opera of Nos. This was his second Jabuti, an extremely rare honor. He has published two books since Opera of Nos: Avessos Avulsos (Sundry Reverses), 2016, and A Sagração dos lobos (Consecration of the Wolves), 2017. In addition to fourteen books of poetry, he has written song lyrics and made recordings with some of Brazil’s leading jazz and pop musicians. His work has appeared in numerous magazines in the USA, including Bitter Oleander, BOMB, Cream City Review, Dirty Goat, Florida Review, Massachusetts Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Here in the USA, prior to Palávora, he was represented by two bilingual collections of poetry: Blood of the Sun (Milkweed Editions, 2012) and Tiger Fur (White Pine Press, 2015). On Nov. 13, 2017, Salgado received an honoris causa doctorate for his achievements in poetry from the Federal University of Piaui in Teresina, Brazil. Salgado, together with his translator, Alexis Levitin, has presented his work at close to one hundred colleges and universities throughout the USA.

Alexis Levitin (above right) translates works from Portugal, Brazil, and Ecuador. His forty-one books of translation include Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm and Eugenio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words, both from New Directions. In 2010, he edited Brazil: A Traveler’s Literary Companion (Whereabouts Press). Recent books from Brazil include Astrid Cabral’s Cage and Salgado Maranhão’s Blood of the Sun and Tiger Fur. Recent books from Portugal include The Art of Patience by Eugenio de Andrade, Exemplary Tales by Portugal’s leading woman writer, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, and Cattle of the Lord by Rosa Alice Branco. Recent books from Ecuador include Tobacco Dogs by Ana Minga, Destruction in the Afternoon by Santiago Vizcaíno, and Outrage by Carmen Váscones. He has been the recipient of two NEA Translation Awards and a participant in two NEH summer seminars. He was a Senior Fulbright Lecturer in Oporto and Coimbra, Portugal in 1980. He was a Fulbright International Specialist teaching Shakespeare and the Translation of American Women Poets into Spanish at the Catholic University of Santiago de Guayaquil, Ecuador, in 2015. IN 2018, he served again as a Fulbright Specialist, teaching Shakespeare, William Blake, and Emily Dickinson, as well as the translation of Contemporary American Women Poets into Portuguese at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. In addition, he has held translation residencies at Banff, Canada, Straelen, Germany (twice), and the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy.