Translating the poems of Blanca Varela: creative practice as knowledge production

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dc.check.date2029-06-30
dc.check.infoControlled Access
dc.contributor.advisorBuffery, Helena
dc.contributor.advisorVeiga, Martín
dc.contributor.authorO'Connor, Eileen Maryen
dc.contributor.funderIrish Research Councilen
dc.date.accessioned2026-06-02T15:16:19Z
dc.date.available2026-06-02T15:16:19Z
dc.date.issued2025-12-31
dc.date.submitted2025-12-31
dc.descriptionControlled Access
dc.description.abstractThis thesis presents new English translations of the first four poetry collections of Peruvian writer Blanca Varela (1926–2009)—Ese puerto existe (1959), Luz de día (1963), Valses y otras falsas confesiones (1971), and Canto villano (1978)—and argues for translation as a creative practice that serves simultaneously as critical reading and scholarly research. My theoretical framework combines ecofeminism and phenomenology to analyze Varela’s negotiation of diverse physical spaces, materials, and perceptual registers. These lenses illuminate how her work engages with embodiment, memory, and environment, while also guiding my own practice as translator. Parallel to this theoretical engagement, I adopt creative methodologies in stages alongside each collection: autofictional writing, through which I enter Varela’s poems as another “I” and interlocutor; somatic movement, used to inhabit the gestures and spatial dynamics evoked by her texts; and sound-based practices that attune me to the aural textures of her poetics. Through these methods, this thesis generates new insights into Varela’s manipulation of gaze, her construction of the poem as a three-dimensional space, her recurrent use of setting as a site of memory, and the plurivocal and intertextual voices that inhabit her work. More broadly, it demonstrates how translation, when combined with other creative practices, can be understood as an embodied, iterative mode of generating knowledge. By linking practice-based translation with critical interpretation, this thesis highlights the potential of creative-critical research methods while advancing a deeper understanding of Varela’s early poetry—contributing new insights to ongoing conversations in translation studies, poetics, and Latin American literary criticism.en
dc.description.statusNot peer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationO'Connor, E. M. 2025. Translating the poems of Blanca Varela: creative practice as knowledge production. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.
dc.identifier.endpage486
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/18941
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherUniversity College Corken
dc.rights© 2025, Eileen Mary O'Connor.
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectBlanca Varela
dc.subjectLiterary translation
dc.subjectPeruvian poetry
dc.subjectTranslation as research
dc.subjectCreative practice
dc.subjectEmbodiment
dc.titleTranslating the poems of Blanca Varela: creative practice as knowledge production
dc.typeDoctoral thesisen
dc.type.qualificationlevelDoctoral
dc.type.qualificationnamePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
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