Poetry & Translation Reading: Patricio Ferrari & Mónica de la Torre

Join us for a celebration of faculty member Patricio Ferrari’s debut poetry collection, Mud Songs (Fence, 2026), with readings by Ferrari and poet and translator Mónica de la Torre, followed by a conversation on poetry in translation. Book sales and signings to follow the event.

Patricio Ferrari: BA, MAS, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. MFA, Brown University. PhD, Universidade de Lisboa. Ferrari is a polyglot poet, literary translator, and editor. As a translator and editor, he has published more than 20 books, including the complete works of Fernando Pessoa’s three heteronyms—Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis—co-translated with Margaret Jull Costa, and The Galloping Hour: French Poems by Alejandra Pizarnik, co-translated with Forrest Gander (all from New Directions). His other book-length translations include works from the Portuguese into English by António Osório (with Susan M. Brown), from the English into Spanish by Laynie Browne, Martin Corless-Smith, Frank Stanford, and W.S. Merwin (with Graciela S. Guglielmone), and from the Spanish into English by Juan Arabia. In 2026, Ferrari received the Fence Modern Poets Series prize for Mud Songs, the first volume of his Elsehere trilogy—an exploration of migration, identity, and vernacular soundscapes. He coined the term “poetic heterophony” to describe a poetics shaped by multiple linguistic systems, each revealing a distinct self or enacting a process of self-othering through an adopted language. Based in New York City, Ferrari teaches at Rutgers University–Newark and in the MFA Program at Sarah Lawrence College. He also hosts “World Poetry Salon,” a collaboration between Limelight Poetry (founded by Wang Yin) and the New York Public Library. SLC, 2022–

Mónica de la Torre was born and raised in Mexico City. She is the author of five poetry collections including the most recent Pause the Document (Nightboat Books, 2025), Repetition Nineteen (Nightboat Books, 2020), The Happy End/All Welcome (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017), Public Domain (Roof Books, 2008), Talk Shows (Switchback Books, 2007). With artist Terence Gower, she co-authored the art book Appendices, Illustrations & Notes (Smart Art Press, 1999). Her books written in Spanish and published in Mexico include Acúfenos (Taller Ditoria, 2006) and Taller de Taquimecanografía (Tumbona Ediciones, 2011), written with the eponymous artists' collective she co-founded. Her translations from Spanish include Lila Zemborain’s Mauve Sea-Orchids (Belladonna Books, 2007; co-translated with Rosa Alcalá) and Poems by Gerardo Deniz (Lost Roads Publishers, 2000), which she also edited. As an editor, de la Torre has co-edited several anthologies, most recently, Women in Concrete Poetry 1959–1979 (Primary Information, 2020) and Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (Copper Canyon Press, 2002). She is the recipient of the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts C.D. Wright Award for Poetry, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and a 2022 Creative Capital grant and teaches poetry and translation at Brooklyn College.