145. Latin American Jewish poets

A new collection of fourteen “artist’s books,” featuring captivating poems and magnificent artwork, highlights the rich culture of Jewish communities in Latin America, thanks to the efforts of Stephen Sadow, professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at Northeastern University. …

In creating the books, Sadow selected 14 poems, and then he and his Argentinian colleagues, Perla Bajder and Irene Jaievsky, chose 14 Jewish artists from across Latin America. Each artist was asked to take one poem and create a unique piece of art based on his or her interpretation of the poem. Handmade in Buenos Aires, each book includes the poem in Spanish; an English translation of it by Sadow and his co-translator, J. Kates; the artwork; and bilingual biographies of the poet and artist. …

“I want to discover and promote the work of a subculture in Latin America that has been totally ignored by rest of the world, and is itself quite fragmented,” said Sadow, who noted that there are an estimated 400,000 Jews living throughout Latin America.

Sadow recently completed a 200-page “open source” anthology that brings together the work of 13 Latin American Jewish poets from the 1960s to the present and includes his and Kates’ translations of those poems into Spanish.  Selected publications, including this anthology, can be found in the Northeastern Library’s digital archive.

“I want these poets to read each other’s poetry and the public to realize this kind of cultural work is being done throughout Latin America,” Sadow said. / Northeastern 29.6.