Over the course of the next year, we're going to open the floodgates with poetry from Latin America. Last year, we launched OOMPH as more of an idea than a press, but after spending a year settling in Buenos Aires, improving our Spanish, and crafting our purpose as a journal, we're ready to hit the ground running.
Starting next month, we'll have a weekly beat on our blog, and you can expect to find translations of contemporary poetry, interviews with poets, translators and editors, and translations of historically significant texts. Rather than creating an aesthetic or defining a focus, we've decided to fill a void with translations, interviews and criticism that we think is important or relevant in any way for our English-language audiences Stateside or abroad.
Last month, the editors over at Real Pants asked us for a scene report on Buenos Aires. In the report, we tried to not only cover recent literary happenings, places of interest, presses, poets and publications, but also provide a brief historical and cultural context of literature in Latin America. Next week, we'll expand upon this piece by presenting a short primer to Latin American literature on our blog, in an effort to offer an introduction to the upcoming beats, as well as add depth and breadth to this project as a whole.
Keep an eye out for A Short Primer to Latin American Literature next week!
-Alex Gregor