Floriano Martins is a Brazilian poet, translator, critic, plastic artist, editor and essayist. He is one of the star guests at the IX City of the Rings International Poetry Meeting of the FIL Santa Cruz 2022 and in recent days He has been touring Santa Cruz, since he had never had the opportunity to be in Bolivia.
Martins is the founder of the literary and cultural studies magazine Agulha, which is over 20 years old and was one of the first web pages dedicated exclusively to these issues in Latin America. “The importance of Agulha is very great for the diffusion not only of literature, it is a magazine of critical studies where we also open space to cinema, plastic arts, music,” explained Martins.
martin’s too He referred to the unfortunate isolation that Brazil has due to language issues with Latin American literature. “It is our historical reality, which is incredible because we are brother countries and there is practically a rejection of Brazil towards the culture of the countries that speak Spanish, not only literature,” Martins emphasized. “Somehow we are not interested, and myself, as a researcher of the Hispanic-American lyrical tradition in Brazil, I have a lot of difficulty putting books in publishers,” he added. “This situation is curious, but isolation is also something criminal.”
The translations
Being a poet and translator too, Martins knows the problem thoroughly when it comes to ‘versioning’ poems in other languages. He knows the difficulties of maintaining the essence of the original text when it is translated. “Translation is what we call a necessary evil. It is inevitable to translate, we live in a complete Babel and there is no other way to make a culture known, especially the literary one, if not through translation”, explained the Brazilian. “The worst and most irresponsible thing to find in translation is when the translator intentionally tries to ‘improve’ the original text,” said Martins.
With the visit to Santa Cruz, Martins settles a pending account, since he did not know anything about Bolivia and neither about its literature. “It is curious, because I have been a researcher of Latin American literature for 30 years and for some inexplicable reason, Bolivia and Honduras are the only two countries that I did not know. Now, finally, thanks to the gods of poetry and my Bolivian friends, here I am,” said Martins.
Regarding the place his work occupies in American literature, the writer said that this is always a difficult question to answer. “There is always something presumptuous in the answer,” he assured. “I feel very well with modernity, with the mastery I have of the language, of the technical advances of the language and that for me is enough”, pointed out Martins. “You have to know how to tame your ego when you ask those kinds of questions,” she concluded.
Martins and Gander read today
Both Floriano Martins and the American Forrest Gander will have their turn to read part of their work today, at the FIL Santa Cruz, from 8:00 p.m. in the Gabriel René Moreno Hall. Both authors will also have a dialogue on poetry and translation. Yesterday, Gander had a conference for the students of the NUR university. The rest of the poets participated in a meeting with students from the De La Sierra school.
Recognized diffuser
Poet, editor, translator, essayist, Floriano Martins is known for having created Agulha Revista de Cultura 20 years ago, a pioneering vehicle for circulation on the Internet and dedicated to the dissemination of critical studies on art and culture. Still active to this day. The “Love for Words” collection, which she co-edits with Leda Rita Cintra
–ARC Edições/Editora Cintra–, with exclusive circulation to
via Amazon, it hits the 85-title mark.
