BOA is based in Rochester, NY, but our authors and translators live all over the world. So it's always a treat for us to have one of them in town. Tomorrow (8/6) translator Judith Kerman will be in Rochester in support of her new translation, Praises & Offenses: Three Women from the Dominican Republic (BOA, 2009). The event will be held at Greenwood Books, 123East Avenue, Rochester, NY. The reading begins at 7:30pm and is free and open to the public.  Praises & Offenses presents the work of three powerful Dominican poets: Aida Cartagena Portalatín, Angela Hernández Núñez, and Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo. Judith Kerman began this translation project in 2002 while she was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in the Dominican Republic, and she believes that these three poets present a rich contrast of linguistic and stylistic elements, as well as addressing shared political and cultural issues and illuminating what it means to be a woman living in modern day Dominican Republic. Judith will read from Praises & Offenses and also discuss the creation of the book, the translation process, and answer questions from the audience.   Here's a sample poem by Aída Cartagena Portalatín from the collection: A Woman is Alone A woman is alone. Alone with her stature. With her open eyes. With her open arms. With her heart open like a wide silence. She waits in the desperate and despairing night without losing hope. She thinks she is in the flagship with the saddest light of creation. Already she has hoisted her sails and let herself be carried by the North wind in accelerated flight before the eyes of love. A woman is alone. She holds her dreams fast with dreams, the dreams that remain to her, and all the sky of the Antilles. Solemn and quiet before the world that is a human stone, in motion, adrift, lost in the sense of its own word, its useless word. A woman is alone.  She thinks that now everything is nothing and no one says anything from the party to the mourning about the blood that leaps, about the blood that runs about the blood that is born or dies of death. Nobody comes forward to offer her a dress to clothe her voice that sobs naked, spelling itself. A woman is alone.  She feels, and her truth drowns---- in thoughts that translate the beauty of the rose, of the star, of love, of man and of God. [caption id="attachment_981" align="aligncenter" width="216" caption="Aida Cartagena. Photo credit Max Pou."][/caption]