Yolanda Castaño
Galicia
Yolanda Castaño (Santiago de Compostela, GALICIA – Spain, 1977) has been publishing poetry originally in Galician for twenty-five years, which she then translates into Spanish. So far, six of her poetry collections have won awards, including: "The Prize of Spanish Criticism", "Espiral Mayor", "Ojo Crítico" (for the best collection published by an author under the age of 35 in Spain), "Novacaixagalicia", the recognition "Author of the year" for 2014 from the Galician bookstores, the Finalist recognition for the "National Prize for Poetry". Her latest titles, published by Visor Libros in a bilingual version, are The Book of the Egoist (2006), Depth of Field (2009) – which was chosen by the weekly El Cultular as one of the five best collections published that year in Spain – and The Second Language (2014), which remained on the threshold of the "National Poetry Award". She is the founder and director of her Residency for Writers in Galicia, as well as a whole scholarship program for poetry stays abroad. She is also an active cultural manager and since 2009 has led various stable projects, always with Galician and international poets: an annual poetry translation workshop, an international poetry festival and monthly poetry readings (award from the Galician critic for the best cultural initiative in 2014). In addition to working as a philologist and making videos, she offers literary workshops, recitals, conferences, video poetry and other performances of his work throughout Europe and America, as well as in Tunisia, Morocco, Cape Verde, India, China and Japan. For many years she worked in television ("Master Mateo" award for the best television communicator in 2005) and published columns in various Galician magazines. Her work has been partially translated into more than twenty-five different languages, and she has published poetry pamphlets in Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Croatian and Macedonian. She has also published works as an editor, co-translator of contemporary authors (including Nikola Majirov and Marko Pogacar in Spanish), an audio recording of a book in Italian, poetry collections in French, English and Serbian, a personal anthology as a poetry comic and six poetry books for children. She develops various experiences that combine poetry with other creative languages (music, visual and audiovisual arts, dance, comics, architecture... all the way to cooking), an activity for which she was awarded and which she realizes alone or in collaboration with other artists.She is the recipient of international scholarships for poetry stays in Rhodes (Greece), Munich, Beijing and Edinburgh.
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Translation: Nikola Gjelinčeski
"The poetics of traveling in Yolanda Castaño's work is not only related to long journeys by different means of transport (from cars to ships and airplanes); it is inevitably connected with intercultural encounters and dialogues, with facing otherness, with constant self-examination, as well as with the relationship with language. Written in Galician language, then translated ie. recreated in Spanish by the author herself, Castaño's poems often thematize the human experience with language, and especially deal with the characteristics of poetic language. Without much risk it could be said that Yolanda Castagno's poetry is to a large extent both metapoetry and poetry that has a strong polyphonic capacity."