Between Fish Scales/Entre Escamas: An Evening of Contemporary Basque Poetry

Join us for an evening dedicated to the craft and complexity of poetry in translation, featuring acclaimed Basque poet Leire Bilbao and her English-language translator, Joana Urtasun.

Presented on the occasion of the publication of Between Fish Scales: Selected Poems—Bilbao’s English-language debut—the program explores the sonic and semantic intricacies of the Basque language and its place within Spain’s literary landscape.

An award-winning poet and author of three celebrated collections in Basque, Bilbao brings a distinctive voice shaped by themes of motherhood and desire, as well as by Basque literary traditions and coastal culture. In conversation with Urtasun, they will reflect on the creative process of carrying poetry across languages, cultures, and sensibilities.

Held in Joaquín Sorolla’s Vision of Spain gallery, the evening will begin with a multilingual reading in Basque, Spanish, and English, followed by a moderated conversation with poet Emily Skillings, author of Tantrums in Air (2025), and an audience Q&A, offering insight into translation as both an art and an act of interpretation.

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Leire Bilbao is the author of several poetry collections,Ezkatak (Susa, 2006), Scanner (Susa, 2011), a bilingual anthology, Entre escamas (Marisma, 2018), and Etxeko urak (Susa, 2020). This last
collection won the Lauaxeta Prize and has been translated into Spanish (Aguas Madres), Catalan (Saliva), Greek (Nepa Manez) and Italian (Acque
di casa). Bilbao has published several children’s books and has received the Premio Euskadi for Children’s literature on two occasions, as well as the 2019 Kirico Prize for her book Bichopoemas (Kalandraka, 2019) and recently the national Prize of Children´s and Young Literature for Klera (Elkar, 2024).

Joana Urtasun is a writer and translator who grew up between the Basque Country and the UK and is based in New York. She received her MFA in Poetry and Literary Translation from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in The London Magazine, METAL Magazine, Berkeley Poetry Review, and Anthropocene Poetry Journal, among others, and she was a finalist in The Sewanee Review’s sixth poetry contest. Leire Bilbao’s, Between Fish Scales: Selected Poems (World Poetry, 2026) is her first book of translation.

Emily Skillings is the author of the poetry collections Fort Not (2017) and Tantrums in Air (2025), both published by The Song Cave. Tantrums in Air was named one of the best poetry books of 2025 by The New York Times. Skillings’ recent poems can be found in Poetry, Harper’s, Granta, The Yale Review, and the New York Review of Books.

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