Tilted Axis Kickstarter – Translating Feminisms: Poetry Chapbooks from Across Asia

Tilted Axis is currently running a kickstarter for a project featuring SE Asian and South Asian women writers in translation. The following is information from their website.

Translating Feminisms is a set of chapbooks showcasing poetry & essays from Vietnam, Nepal, South India, published by Tilted Axis Press.

Tilted Axis Press is a not-for-profit press on a mission to shake up contemporary international literature.

Tilted Axis publishes the books that might not otherwise make it into English, for the very reasons that make them exciting to us – artistic originality, radical vision, the sense that here is something new.

Tilting the axis of world literature from the centre to the margins allows us to challenge that very division. These margins are spaces of compelling innovation, where multiple traditions spark new forms and translation plays a crucial role.

What is TRANSLATING FEMINISMS?

Translating Feminisms showcases intimate collaborations between some of Asia’s most exciting female writers and emerging-star translators: contemporary poetry of bodies, labour and language, alongside essays exploring questions such as ‘Does feminism translate?’

As part of Tilted Axis’s wider project of decolonisation through & of translation, and in response to seeing WoC authors’ work misread through a white feminist lens, we want to re-imagine the possibilities of a fully intersectional, international feminism, and ensure authors have the creative agency to contextualise their own work.

Small, beautiful and highly collectable, the chapbooks will be available individually and as a set.

The set of 3 will release this August (aka Women in Translation month). But first we need your help.

The line-up so far:

  • Vietnam: Nhã Thuyên, translated by Kaitlin Rees 
  • Nepal: Sulochana Manandhar Dhital, translated by Muna Gurung
  • South India: edited & translated by Meena Kandasamy, from the Tamil
Vietnamese author Nhã Thuyên, with translator Kaitlin Rees

About the chapbooks

From Vietnam comes a poetry collection and a poetic feminine body essay by writer and publisher Nha Thuyen, translated from the Vietnamese by Kaitlin Rees. Read Nha Thuyen’s poem ‘which orientation with sea’ published by The Margins and ‘the ship’ in Asymptote.

Next up we have a chapbook by the brilliant Nepali poet and labour activist Sulochana Manandhar, translated by Muna Gurung. Read Sulochana’s poem ‘Night’ published by Words Without Borders and her interview with The Record.

Plus we have Four Tamil Poets, a chapbook edited by Meena Kandasamy, featuring new translations by her alongside some by the late Lakshmi Holmstrom, of poetry by Malathi Maithri, Salma, Kutti Revathi and Sukirtharani.

Tilted Axis Press’ Translating Feminisms Kickstarter campaign ends on July 12, 2018.

Visit here to read more and contribute to this project.

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