Jonathan Stalling

Workshop

Seven Ways Into a Poem You Can't Read: Translation Drills for Monolingual Poets

You do not need a second language to use translation as a generative engine. These seven exercises — built for MFA seminars, library writing groups, and one person at a kitchen table — turn a poem you can't read into raw material for poems you can write.

Nov 9, 2026

Essays

Two Drafts of the Same Silence: Reading Chinese Poetry Beside the Machine

I fed a four-line Tang poem into three translation engines and then spent a week making my own version. The machines were never wrong, exactly — they were just deaf in places I've learned to listen. A craft note on what fluency still costs, and what readers of translated poetry should put their ear to now.

Nov 9, 2026