"PERPETUALLY UNDER TRANSLATION"

is my working title for the section in my 2007 book, THE LIGHT SANG AS IT LEFT YOUR EYES, which will feature Ernesto Priego's Spanish translations of some of my poems. As said title implies, I am talking about a larger world of perception of Moi -- among other things, as a poet, as a woman, as a Filipino, as a sexpot (heh), and as an "Ascemic Chatelaine".

I am grateful for Ernesto's translation of my words because I always thought that if the meaning of (my) abstract poems cannot be pinned down, how then can they be translated? The welcoming is significant -- and that Ernesto picked up on that addresses the opening of that door.

(Relatedly, much of the "translations" of my work has been into non-literary forms and I often thought for a decidedly logical reason related to abstraction.)

So thanks for Ernesto's notions on translations, specifically of my poems, such as this excerpt:

Eileen's poetic project(s), her poetics that is, lends itself perfectly to address the question of the need and impossibility of translation. Translating Eileen's poetry into Spanish is a hard task: nothing seems to fully translate (does anything ever?), while at the same time offering itself in a linguistic hospitality that invites the reader to translate.