Mónica de la Torre
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Mónica de la Torre | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1969 (age 56–57) Mexico City, Mexico |
| Occupation | Poet, literary translator, academic, editor |
| Education | Columbia University (PhD) |
| Notable works | Repetition Nineteen (2020), The Happy End/All Welcome (2017), Pause the Document (2025) |
| Notable awards | C.D. Wright Award for Poetry (2022) |
Mónica de la Torre (born 1969) is a New York-based poet, literary translator, and academic who was born in Mexico City. Her work is widely celebrated for her innovative and experimental approaches with formalism, her exploration of overlooked or infrequently explored subjects, and for its engagement with avant-garde movements across the Americas. Her multidisciplinary practice engages with a wide variety of poetic traditions, including concrete poetry[1] and experiments with a variety of artistic modes in the vein of John Cage.[2] In 2022, she was awarded the C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.[3]
De la Torre moved from Mexico City to New York in 1993.[4] She earned a PhD in Spanish Literature from Columbia University. She has held various academic appointments, including as a Professor of Practice in Literary Arts at Brown University and as a professor at Brooklyn College.[5]
De la Torre served as a senior editor at BOMB Magazine and contributes to international literary journals such as The Paris Review.[6] She is also involved with the New York-based press, Futurepoem Books.
Poetics and translations
With each book, Mónica de la Torre conceptualizes an entirely new poetic approach. After publishing numerous literary translations in the early 2000s, she published her first poetry book Talk Shows, which flips gender and race markers on their head, calling into question the way readers understand identity. Her second collection Public Domain pivot significantly, writing what Bob Holman calls a "conceptual mystery poem".[7]
Her most experiments in Repetition Nineteen are especially widely celebrated. Her experiments with self-translation in Repetition Nineteen challenge the traditional hierarchy between "source" and "target" languages.[8]