It doesn’t matter whose ghost you see
as long as you see one.
—Hélène Cardona
Selected Reviews
Fracture by Andrés Newman in World Literature Today
Fracture by Andrés Newman in Latin American Literature Today
Salt Water by Laura Braverman, The Patron Saint of Cauliflower by Elizabeth Cohen, Forgive the Body this Failure by Blas Falconer, Vacant Possession by Anne Fitzgerald, and The Mind by John FitzGerald in Tarpaulin Sky Magazine
Rustin Larson’s Howling Enigma in North of Oxford
Stephen Yenser’s Stone Fruit in The London Magazine:
“Exhilarating Magus: Myth and Poetics in Stephen Yenser’s Stone Fruit“
John Ashbery’s Collected French Translations in The London Magazine:
“The Imaginative Mind: Enchantment and Transcendence in John Ashbery’s Collected French Translations”
Cast Off by Daniel Simon in Poetry International:
“Daniel Simon’s Harvest of Words ‘Tilled into Existence'”
GHOST/LANDSCAPE by Kristina Marie Darling and John Gallaher in Colorado Review
Rustin Larson’s The Philosopher Savant in The Enchanting Verses Literary Review:
“A Bittersweet Celebration of Life”
The Sun & the Moon by Kristina Marie Darling in The Lit Pub:
“Intractable Ghosts or Kristina Marie Darling’s Personal and Imaginative World in The Sun & the Moon“
Judge
2022 ALTA National Translation Award in Poetry 2017 Jacar Press Full Length Competition 2016 PEN Center USA Translation Award
2015 Writer’s Digest Challenge
2014 Rabindranath Tagore Award
Conference presentations & Talks
21 April 2024, Los Angeles Times Festival of Books 2024 AWP Translation panel, Kansas City: From the French but not from France: A Bilingual Reading of Francophone Poems 2021 AWP Translation panel: Translating the Untranslatable: A Reading of International Experimental Poetry 2020 Miami Book Fair: Resistencia: Poems of Protest and Revolution 2020 Tenth Annual Gathering of Poets 2019 Translation panel at AWP/Portland: Translation as the Art of Reincarnation 2019, 2017 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books 2018 Translation panel at AWP/Tampa: The Glories of Impossible Translations 2017 Translation panel at AWP/D.C. 2016 Translation panel at AWP/Los Angeles 2016 University of Rochester, N.Y., Reading the World Conversation Series: Poetry, Translation, Prizes & Publishing
2016 The Browning Society, New York: Robert and Elizabeth Browning, Virginia Woolf and Henry James and the Subjects of Sex, Violence, Poetry and Art 2015 Translation panel at AWP/Minneapolis
2014 Translation panel at AWP/Seattle
2013 Translation panel at AWP/Boston 2013 Publication panel at AWP/Boston 2012 Translation panel at AWP/Chicago
2011 Translation panel at AWP/D.C.
2009 Translation panel at AWP/Chicago
2008 Translation panel at AWP/New York
2006 Translation panel at AWP/Austin
Mentor
Hélène volunteers as a mentor in AWP’s Writer-to-Writer program.
Hélène also volunteers to read to children in schools.
Interviews
Dorianne Laux, Plume
John Ashbery, The Poetry Foundation
John Ashbery, Le Mot juste en anglais
Thomas McCarthy, Plume
Robert Redford, Télématin, France 2, TV 5
Essays
Diann Blakely Tribute, The Journal of American Poetry
Translator’s Note: The Feminine, Land of Welcome by Christiane Singer, Asymptote
Translator’s Note: I Look at You by Maram Al-Masri, Hayden’s Ferry Review
Translator’s Note: Poetry by Eric Sarner, The Brooklyn Rail’s InTranslation
Translation as a Love Affair, World Literature Today
El bosque de Birnam / Birnam Wood by José Manuel Cardona, Waxwing Magazine, Issue 3
Poetry Editorial, Live Encounters
Poetry Editorial, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review
La poesía de José Manuel Cardona, Periódico de poesía
Un poema de José Manuel Cardona per M. Villangómez Llobet, Eivissa
Orson Welles et Yul Brynner, deux géants du cinéma américain, Le Mot juste en anglais
Guest Lecturer & Reader
at over 100 venues in the U.S. & abroad, notably Brown University, the 2014 Puterbaugh International Literary Festival at Oklahoma State University, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Poets House, Tabula Poetica at Chapman University, The Annenberg Beach House Poetry Reading Series, Ó Bhéal’s in Cork, the European Independent Film Festival, Claremont Graduate University, the University of Rochester, The West Hollywood Book Fair, The Petaluma Poetry Walk, the Geffen Playhouse, the Orange County Poetry Festival, the Theosophical Society, Loyola Marymount University, the University of California at Irvine, Consell Insular d’Eivissa (Ibiza), and the New York Browning Society.
Editorial
Contributing Editor to Cervena Barva Press International Co-Editor: Plume Essay contributor: The London Magazine Co-Editor: Fulcrum: An Anthology of Poetry and Aesthetics Editorial Board: Levure Littéraire Editorial Advisor: Envision Earth Magazine Contributing Editor: Cervena Barva Press Former Co-Editor: Dublin Poetry Review Guest Editor: The Enchanting Verses Literary Review (Issue XX), Life and Legends (Inaugural Issue)
Selected Anthologies
RESISTENCIA: Poems of Protest and Revolution (Tin House Books 2020) Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing: Poems of Protest and Revolution (2020) Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing: Displaced Lives (2020) Poetry International 25/26 (2019) Pratik A Magazine of Contemporary Writing Vol XV (2019) The Plume Anthology of Poetry 6 Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse The Plume Anthology of Poetry 5 Red Sky/Poetry on the Global Epidemic of Violence Against Women Even the Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry The Plume Anthology of Poetry 4 The Plume Anthology of Poetry 3 Read Women: An Anthology Poetry International 18/19 Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology Plume Interviews 1 Illuminations: Expressions of the Spiritual Experience World English Poetry Dead and Undead Poems: Zombies, Ghosts, Vampires and Devils Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond Intimacy: An Anthology
Skin has its aroma, its murmur,
Its fiery color and mystery.
Thus love begins with the skin,
With dark hair, and penetrates
Like a bull horn, to the bones.
To the bones, Circe, you’ve penetrated,
Into my deep bones that proclaim
The vertebrate pain of the species.
I open my blood in love and offer it to you.
—José Manuel Cardona