Renata Golden

January 26, 2025

Greetings and news from Santa Fe —

January has been cold here in Santa Fe, and I find myself staying home, staying warm. I have been reading a lot of poetry lately, and have found work by Tomas Venclova, Lithuanian poet, dissident, and activist. Venclova's work is hard to find online; after much digging, I have requested one of his poetry collections via an interlibrary loan. In the meantime, I found this great interview with Rimas Užgiris, one of Venclova's translators; its title is "Translation: It's like acting, minus Brad Pitt." It can be hard for some to get into writing in translation, but without it, I wouldn't have been able to read Neruda or Rilke, or Olga Tokarczuk or Han Kang. When the Venclova book comes, I will share some poems (translated into English). In the meantime, I encourage you to keep warm with a work in translation.

In other news, I will be speaking at the Irish American Society in Albuquerque on Valentine's Day. This event is free and open to the public, and I've been promised tea (I'll bet it's Barry's). I'm also delighted to announce that Mountain Time: A Field Guide to Astonishment has won the Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association, and got this glowing review from Publisher's Weekly:  "Golden unites nature and humankind into a breathtaking, give-and-take dance, transporting readers from immigrant stories and insightful explorations of displaced Indigenous peoples to considerations of the animals at her doorstep, all connected by threads of love and respect."

To keep you company by the fire, here is Madra from NewDad, a band from Galway. The Irish Times calls their music "shoegaze music – those steel-fist-in-a-velvet-glove rhythms." "Madra" means "dog" in Irish, so this tune will be a good companion for you as we move into February.

Hope you are staying healthy and well.

Renata