From Deleuze and Guattari’s essay on “Minor Literature” to Alfred Arteaga’s work on Chicanx poetics, theorists have studied the relationship between power and language, describing how creative writers find inventive ways to interrogate monolingual and nationalist logics.[1] Often, personal as well as historical conditions shape an author’s linguistic choices. My interest here lies in how poets use citation and translation as craft techniques in forging poetic languages that challenge powerful configurations and histories.
Slippages
In 2006 Roberto Manzano conducted an interview with his fellow writer Rito Ramón Aroche in Havana. AMNIOS magazine published the interview in 2012, and it was later reprinted at the website Cuba Literaria (overseen by the Cuban Book Institute). Unfortunately their page doesn’t currently load on any of my browsers, only a short line warning of malicious code. Perhaps this replacement is appropriate, since Aroche does something to deconstruct the framework of virtually every question asked by Manzano. Here are excerpts from their conversation, brought into English.