Julia Pelosi-Thorpe reading ‘tandem’

Note and glossary

tandem speaks to an elegy attributed to Sulpicia, thought to be a rare Ancient Roman woman poet, and implicates three later Italian translations (M. Ramous, F. Santucci, and M. Gabriele). In articulations of Sulpicia’s romantic joy and shame, untranslatability is explored as incommunicability. Linguistic valencies are re-calculated in shifting equations. Some words, like manifesto and pure, can read equally, but there can be meaning without understandings beyond English.

Glossary (opens in a new page).

Julia Anastasia Pelosi-Thorpe grew up speaking Italian and English and learnt Latin as an undergraduate. Her translations of contemporary poetry are published/forthcoming in the Journal of Italian Translation, Griffith Review, Plumwood Mountain, and more. She can be found at @jpelosithorpe.