Monchoachi (tr. Patricia Hartland)
Monchoachi is a Martinican poet, essayist, and translator. Over his forty-year career, he has published more than a dozen volumes of poetry—in both French and Antillean Creole—as well as three essay collections. He has also translated Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and Waiting for Godot into Antillean Creole, among other plays. Monchoachi was active in anti-colonial and immigrant justice movements, and currently runs Lakouzémi (“the zemi’s heart”), his small publishing house and Antillean cultural organization. He has received the Carbet Caribbean Prize, the Max Jacob Prize, and the International Francophone Studies Council Prize.
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Patricia Hartland is a candidate for the M.F.A. in poetry at the University of Notre Dame and a recent graduate of the Iowa Translation Workshop. She translates from French, Martinican Creole, and Hindi, with a special interest in Caribbean literature. Her translations of prose, poetry, and theatre have appeared or are forthcoming in Asymptote, Circumference, Drunken Boat, Two Lines, and elsewhere.
