"Diosa te salve, Yemayá" / "Hail Yemayá" by Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, translated by Raquel Salas Rivera

Yolanda Arroyo Pizzaro’s poem extends a lineage of translation in the general sense—African spiritual practices resituated amidst the colonized and enslaved populations of the Carribean further syncretized in Arroyo Pizarro’s poem with the form of the Ave Maria to call the spirit nearer toward points of crisis. Arroyo Pizarro knows we need here and now the strength to survive and intervene in gendered and sexualized violence, among too many forms of violence. The urgency and faith in these words mirror the energies that shaped the larger project of Puerto Rico en Mi Corazón. To raise funds for Puerto Rico’s Taller Salud in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Carina del Valle Schorske, Ricardo Maldonado, Erica Mena, and Raquel Salas Rivera partnered with thirteen letterpress printers to offer bilingual broadsides from seventeen contemporary Puerto Rican poets. From wind to word to text to throat to breath translated and transformed to wind again. —Farid Matuk

Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, translated by Raquel Salas Rivera. "Diosa te salve, Yemayá / Hail Yemayá" from Puerto Rico en Mi Corazón Super Letterpress Edition. Design and letterpress printing by Chaz Nove. Minneapolis: Minnesota Center for Book Arts, 2017.