Why would anyone store braided hair in a basket? "The women in my family / keep the hair / they cut off / in a basket of braids. // It's an ancient tradition, / no one can remember / who started it."
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Summary
Why would anyone store braided hair in a basket? "The women in my family / keep the hair / they cut off / in a basket of braids. // It's an ancient tradition, / no one can remember / who started it."
Description
The title of Basket of Braids forms a surprising image. Why would anyone store braided hair in a basket? "The women in my family / keep the hair / they cut off / in a basket of braids. // It's an ancient tradition, / no one can remember / who started it."
For Belarusian poet Natalia Litvinova, who immigrated with her family to Buenos Aires at the age of ten, this basket of braids symbolises the strength of the bonds between the rural Slavic women who came before her - and her own link to her heritage across time and space.
Litvinova's poems evoke memories of the culture and place that shaped her through dense lines rich with imagery. Each poem is a jewel, a talisman, a spell, often lingering on relationships between Litvinova's ancestors and the land they were tied to, its flora and fauna: "Our lives / are full / of distances / even horses / can't shorten."
Appearing for the first time in English translation by Kelsi Vanada, Basket of Braids gives readers an intimate experience of one poet's memory and heritage, held in language like amber.
About the Author
Natalia Litvinova is an Argentine poet, translator, and editor of the press Editorial Llanten. Her books have been translated into multiple languages and published in France, Germany, and Spain, as well as in Argentina. She teaches writing classes in libraries and in the Fundacion Centro Psicoanalitico Argentino. She was born in Gomel, Belarus, and has lived in Buenos Aires since her family's immigration there in 1996. Among the poets she has translated from the Russian are Sergei Esenin, Vladislav Khodasevich, Zinaida Gippius, Cherubina de Gabriak and Innokenty Annensky.
Kelsi Vanada's book-length translations include Damascus, Atlantis by Marie Silkeberg (Terra Nova Press, 2021), long-listed for the 2022 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, as well as Into Muteness by Sergio Espinosa (Veliz Books, 2020) and The Eligible Age by Berta Garcia Faet (The Song Bridge Project, 2018). She is also the author of the poetry chapbook Rare Earth (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Kelsi is the Program Manager of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) in Tucson, AZ.
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