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Kymm Coveney (Boston, 1959) lives in Barcelona and spends summers in Jamaica Plain. History of Milk, her translation of award-winning novelist Mónica Ojeda’s poetry collection, will be published by Coffee House Press in 2026/27. Poems from this collection have been published in Poesía en acción, Poetry Northwest, Latin American Literature Today, The Georgia Review, and two are forthcoming in World Literature Today. Another was awarded Honorable Mention in the 2022 New England Poetry Club’s Diana Der-Hovanessian Prize for translation, a prize she will be judging this year. Kymm’s poetry has been included most recently in California Quarterly and Molecule: a tiny lit mag in the US, as well as Atrium Poetry and various anthologies in the UK. More at https://betterlies.blogspot.com/ (Photo by Cesc Anadón).

Ways of Translating a Poem

Kymm Coveney

Hum its words to the tune of a favorite song
         maybe The River or Let’s Stay Together.
Recite each poem in the voice of a blackbird.
         Learn to speak with your beak. Less tongue.
Wrap each word around your finger. Give it a tickle.
         Take care when overstepping boundaries.
Gargle unwilling phrases but use only filtered water.
         Mouthwash is bad for prepositions in any language.
Try changing the color of a verb. You may have to
         engage in trickery as verbs are not salamanders.
Unscrew the caps of wayward pronouns found in a rut
         though the rut be flooded with crocodile tears.
Lick the occasional stanza to help straighten out rogue lines.
         Especially those twisty ones on the road to the sea.

— Kymm Coveney

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