Preface

We are delighted to introduce the latest issue of Delos, with Gabriele Belletti stepping in as the new Editor-in-Chief. This transition ensures continuity, as Benjamin Hebblethwaite, our former Editor-in-Chief, will remain as Coeditor, bringing his dedication and infectious enthusiasm to the role. Our journal continues to blend academic rigor with a welcoming spirit of innovation. This rigor is maintained through double peer-reviewed contributions, complemented by comprehensive introductions and critical analyses and thanks to teamwork in collaboration with the Managing Editor, Richard Gray, the Journals Manager Lauren Phillips, and the entire University of Florida Press. Innovation is reflected in our embrace of diverse cultures and languages, as well as various modes of translation across poetry, prose, and other artistic forms, fostering a welcoming attitude towards different perspectives.

The quality of this publication also builds upon the enrichment of the Editorial Board with its new members, Associate Professors Silvia Valisa from Florida State University and Linxin Liang from Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Silvia Valisa, an accomplished scholar, translator, and poet, is well-versed in Italian literature, photography, journalism, and digital humanities. She has translated poetry into both Italian and English and is currently studying the impact of the Milan-based publisher Sonzogno on Italian culture. Linxin Liang specializes in translation and intercultural studies, with numerous publications in prestigious international journals and two authored monographs. We are also pleased to feature in this volume the first contributions from our new editors for book and film reviews, Pasquale Verdicchio and Sylvie Blum-Reid. In this edition, thanks to their care, we present James McCorkle’s review of Rae Armantrout’s collection Notice (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2024) and Gianluca Rizzo’s review of Lorenzo Mari’s Cancellation, translated by Paul Vangelisti (Los Angeles and Bagnone: Magra Books, 2023).

As our readers know, in the previous edition, Delos initiated a call inviting authors and translators to submit literary texts translated into English, along with analyses, commentaries, and essays on specific themes for future editions. These themes included Environmental Literature, Literature and Migration, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Translation versus Human Translation, Contemporary Poetry, and Dialects in Translation (please refer to the previous edition for the full call). The response was overwhelmingly positive and diverse, particularly in poetry, starting with Italian poetry. This Delos issue, in fact, features three translations of contemporary Italian poetry: La sorella dell’Ave (Two Sisters, 1992) by Ludovica Ripa di Meana, translated by Silvia Valisa and Jessica Beasley; three poems by Mariano Bàino, translated by Gianluca Rizzo and Dominic Siracusa; and a selection from A sciame (In Swarm, 2023) by Maria Grazia Insinga, translated by Marco Nicosia. Additionally, this edition includes poetic translations from two other European languages—French and Polish: Timothy Perry’s translations of French chansons de toile (weaving songs) and Piotr Gwiazda’s translations of poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski.

Continuing our focus on poetry, we publish an essay on translating from German to Italian by Anna Maria Carpi, translated by Lisa Mulleneaux, and a reflection on the mistranslations of Rumi’s poetry into English by Abeer Piracha. For what concerns prose, this issue also features Reinaldo Cabrera Perez’s translation of an excerpt from Dara Dontsova’s Russian novel Вакантное место райской птички (The Empty Nest of a Bird of Paradise) and a reflection by Susan Caperna Lloyd on the novel Gjenerali i ushtrisë së vdekur (The General of the Dead Army) by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare—in memoriam, he was a great author who recently passed away.

We are also pleased to announce that, starting with this edition, each release of Delos will feature artworks from contemporary artists. Selected by the editorial team, these artworks will explore the theme of translation in various ways and from different perspectives. Special editions may also focus on other themes and will be announced through specific calls for submissions. All forms of art are welcome (photography, paintings, digital art, etc.), as long as they can be reproduced in black-and-white print format. Artists may submit up to five artworks (in TIFF or PDF format) to editors Gabriele Belletti (g.belletti@ufl.edu) and/or Benjamin Hebblethwaite (hebble@ufl.edu), granting permission for reproduction in the journal, accompanied by a brief biography. Selected artists will be contacted by the editorial team. The first featured works in this edition are four couplets from the series Didascalie (Captions, 2022–2023) by the artist Alessandro Morino and the poet Ivan Schiavone, with lyrics translated from Italian by Gianluca Rizzo and Dominic Siracusa.

Finally, we want to announce in advance, given the response to the call regarding Environmental Humanities and the growing relevance of poetry focused on ecological themes, that next year we plan a special issue dedicated to Italian poetry that is close to ecological concerns, a topic for which there is not yet a comprehensive anthology in English.

Gabriele Belletti, Benjamin Hebblethwaite, and Richard Gray