guerilla bitchcraft by Adelaide Ivanova
'guerilla bitchcraft' was the first poem by Adelaide Iv\xe1nova that the Poetry Translation Centre translated at a workshop with\xa0Francisco Vilhena and Clare Pollard in 2017.
The PTC workshop was dazzled by Iv\xe1nova\u2019s breadth of reference, lurching between the personal and political. One moment she jokes about weed and star-signs, the next she\u2019s addressing rape, colonialism and Zika. It\u2019s not often in a poetry workshop you have to read a whole Nirvana lyric (turns out \u2018Polly\u2019 is not really about a parrot). And how to translate the \u2018piriguetismo\u2019 of the title? Francisco Vilhena, who provided the bridge translation, said it meant something like \u2018bitchism\u2019, but had more a celebratory charge (a woman saying it to another woman was being positive). Anne Macaulay made a very convincing case for \u2018bitchismo\u2019 but in the end we settled on Francisco\u2019s suggestion of \u2018bitchcraft\u2019 as it sounded more empowered and cunning!\xa0
The poem is read in Portuguese and English by\xa0Adelaide herself.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
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