Translation by Pitt-Bradford Professor Aappears in Galician Poetry Anthology

A poem translated from Galician to English by Dr. Carys Evans-Corrales, professor of Spanish at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, appears in the newly published “Anthology of Galician Literature 1196-1981.”

Evans-Corrales said she was asked by the anthology editor Jonathan Dunne to translate the poem “Abedoeiras” or “Birches” by Aquilino Iglesia Alvariño.

“The poem that I translated is from Iglesia Alvariño’s 1947 collection ‘Comaros Verdes’ (‘Green Borders’) and belongs to the Post-Spanish Civil War period of 1939 to 1981,” Evans-Corrales said.

She explained that Iglesia Alvariño is known for his love of the Galician countryside. Like many Spanish poets of his period, he managed to evade the censorship of General Francisco Franco by writing “innocuously” about aspects of the area that is now officially an autonomous region of Spain under a kind of federalized system.

Franco’s government was always on the alert for separatist activity from areas of Spain that spoke a different language than the official Castilian, including Galicia.

Galician, Evans-Corrales explained, is a language spoken in northwest Spain, where she taught English and translation at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela from 1973 to 1985. Until the 14th century, Galician was a version of Portuguese, but owing to political changes in the Iberian Peninsula, it evolved over the centuries to form an interesting language of its own now undergoing a lively literary renaissance.

Evans-Corrales is the director of the Spanish program at Pitt-Bradford and lives in Bradford with her husband, Scott Corrales.