To One / To Multiple
Pamenar Press, 2024
/////////112 Pages
14.8 x 21 CM
ISBN: 978-1-915341-19-8
A Multilingual Journey with Jèssica Pujol Duran
To One / To Multiple is a collection of multiple series of poetry that the poet Jèssica Pujol Duran wrote living in and out of London between 2013 and 2020. It contains a multiplicity of references, geographies, and voids, coming from memory, objects and the present, where words become entangled with the language of marketing in order to reconfigure themselves in a poetic space that travels faster than the tube where these are found. Jèssica writes in Catalan, Spanish and English, creating a multiplicity here reunited in one form that invites the reader towards their own travel. The collection's multilingual nature enriches its exploration of everyday life and broader cultural narratives, offering readers a multifaceted reading experience. It includes a mix of previously published works and new translations, emphasizing Pujol Duran's skill in crafting poetry that crosses linguistic boundaries.
"Dalliance, labour, reproduction, humour; childhood, danger, memory, shopping; bodies that ooze and separate; milk froth served to a face gone blue with language, and the face before it; bullshit jobs and butt banners; this universe cluttered and shaking and beautifully worn – there’s enough in Jèssica Pujol Duran’s new collection to make your spinning head stop and ‘tremble / in the relation’. Watch how her words bend and reconnect ‘until they become recognisable / and stars will unfold a new night’. Watch her wring the necks of the black roosters of Congress."
--Andrea Brady
"These are configured stress patterns, lifted into song by shaped edges in troubled calms attentive and fraught, broken and recovered, suites of successive healing balms, courtships with jeopardy and worry lifted into lilts of soft warmth against torn moments. These poems enhance our breath and mould it; it is as if they record a daily routine damaged by circumstance and then repaired by this not described but glimpsed and caught, fields of images and imagination in an exemplary poetry to take your gasp into the street. The songs rise and fall but never dip and leave the reader in a state of rested lift."
---Allen Fisher
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Jèssica Pujol Duran (Barcelona, 1982) is a poet, translator and researcher. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature, and is currently working at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile. She has published several articles on Latin American neo-avant-garde poetry, experimental literature, creative translation, and contemporary poetry written by women from an intercultural, multilingual, and transatlantic point of view. She writes and translates in Catalan, English and Spanish. She has published three plaquettes in English, Now Worry (Department, 2012), Every Bit of Light (Oystercatcher Press, 2012) and Mare (Carnaval Press, 2018); two books in Catalan with the Pont del Petroli publishing house, El país pintat (2015) and ninó, (2019), and two in Spanish, Entrar es tan difícil salir (Veer Books, 2016), with English translations by William Rowe, and El campo envolvente (LP5 Editora, 2021). As an editor and translator, she highlights the anthology Temporary Archives. Poetry by Women of Latin America (Arc Publications, 2022), and Lisa Robertson's translation, Los hombres. Un libro lírico (Bisturí10, 2022).