Olivia Milberg, translated by Cameron Lovejoy, artwork by LaDa6a

A micro-work by Argentine poet Olivia Milberg and artist LaDa6a, Two Fingers of Water is a lyric exploration of a post-natural world sick with symbolism and the dizzying interplay between good and evil. Translator Cameron Lovejoy harnesses the demonic power of translation to “resurrect entities wearing different faces,” to snatch the mutable and hauntingly multifaceted spirit of a poem. This chapbook invites readers into a dark interpretive space where purification is poison and choice stands as the only remedy.

PRAISE

“Olivia Milberg's poems infect the act of contemplation with an evocative and slightly wicked gaze. Here, daily life turns from uncanny to erotic, like squeezing a rubber medicine dropper only to find oneself ‘caressing the nipples of a saint.’ Cameron Lovejoy's English translation loses none of the fun, capturing the lilting syntax of Milberg's humour precisely.”

Laura Jaramillo

“Olivia Milberg’s Two Fingers of Water is a poetry of acute observation. Swaying between maximally saturated long breath and delicately arranged lyric, it never fails to produce precise geometries of sentiment via image. Cameron Lovejoy’s translation is just right – musical, conversational – his English capturing these flashes of Argentine and Chilean life like fireflies in a jar. “

Kit Schluter, author of Cartoons

“Olivia Milberg's two fingers of water translated by Cameron Lovejoy, dissolves capital-poison into the natural world through the tamed domesticities of the human, animal, and flora. Dogs, snakes, mushrooms, the uniting lifeblood of all species, water itself, is soiled by human living––cleaned and cleared only by the chemicals concocted to immortalize the body at the expense of the spirit as ‘[s]oap doesn't foam / on the body...this soil / I scrub / has become my skin.’ In Milberg's worldview, the eco-terror of human life contaminates both body and cure, procuring for us our slow, inevitable decline along with the natural world we are meant to steward. Here is an oration of flaws, where ‘you will repent / and you are cured’ and yet, ‘the dog is [still] vile.’ What a brutal, honest depiction of a world we must hold close at all cost. What a dark, vibrant richness Milberg's language reveals to us: to heed the terrible visions we see, and must see, to change.”

Jimin Seo author of OSSIA

Poetry, Spanish & English

Publication date: January 29, 2025

Format: Letterpress cover, long-stitch bound, 42 pages, 5" x 5"