Word Heart
Yaxkin Melchy
translated from the Spanish
by Ryan Greene
35 pages, paper, staple-bound.
Toad Press/Veliz Books, 2023. $6.00
Cover design: Niel Gan.
Yaxkin Melchy Ramos (Mexico City, b. 1985) is a Mexican and Peruvian-Quechua poet, translator, ecopoetics researcher, bookmaker, and artisan-activist-editor who writes primarily in Spanish. He is the author of THE NEW WORLD, a five-part “constellation-book” which was written intermittently between 2007 and 2017. Currently he is a post-doctoral student at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, where he is researching ecopoetic currents between Japan and Latin America. Since 2017, he has been translating contemporary Japanese poetry to Spanish, and currently he runs the artisanal press Cactus del viento, which focuses on ecological, spiritual, and transpacific poetics. He also publishes on his personal blog, Flor de Amaneceres.
Ryan Greene (AZ, b. 1994) is a translator, book farmer, and poet from Phoenix, Arizona who is currently working with Yaxkin Melchy to translate the first three books of THE NEW WORLD. He's a co-conspirator at F*%K IF I KNOW//BOOKS [www.fiikbooks.org] and a housemate at no.good.home [www.nogoodhome.com]. His translations include work by Elena Salamanca, Claudina Domingo, Ana Belén López, Giancarlo Huapaya, and Yaxkin Melchy, among others. Since 2018, he has facilitated the Cardboard House Press Cartonera Collective bookmaking workshops at Palabras Bilingual Bookstore. Like Collier, the ground he stands on is not his ground.
Yaxkin Melchy Ramos (Mexico City, b. 1985) is a Mexican and Peruvian-Quechua poet, translator, ecopoetics researcher, bookmaker, and artisan-activist-editor who writes primarily in Spanish. He is the author of THE NEW WORLD, a five-part “constellation-book” which was written intermittently between 2007 and 2017. Currently he is a post-doctoral student at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, where he is researching ecopoetic currents between Japan and Latin America. Since 2017, he has been translating contemporary Japanese poetry to Spanish, and currently he runs the artisanal press Cactus del viento, which focuses on ecological, spiritual, and transpacific poetics. He also publishes on his personal blog, Flor de Amaneceres.
Ryan Greene (AZ, b. 1994) is a translator, book farmer, and poet from Phoenix, Arizona who is currently working with Yaxkin Melchy to translate the first three books of THE NEW WORLD. He's a co-conspirator at F*%K IF I KNOW//BOOKS [www.fiikbooks.org] and a housemate at no.good.home [www.nogoodhome.com]. His translations include work by Elena Salamanca, Claudina Domingo, Ana Belén López, Giancarlo Huapaya, and Yaxkin Melchy, among others. Since 2018, he has facilitated the Cardboard House Press Cartonera Collective bookmaking workshops at Palabras Bilingual Bookstore. Like Collier, the ground he stands on is not his ground.
