I believe that translation should be a parallel melody to the creation of every poet. For my part, I practice it avidly.

My first powerful experience of translation was through the poetry of John Ashbery. At the age of 20, together with Leonardo Videla (a fellow Pablo Neruda Foundation fellow in Chile) I began translating poems by Ashbery that enchanted me with their strangeness, such as the sestina Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape. Young and unabashed, I wrote to the Nobel nominee poet telling him of my translations and my thoughts on his poetry. To my astonishment, Ashbery wrote back and we began to correspond. He told me that he was particularly interested in my comments about the influence of classical music that I perceived in his poetry. The exchange blossomed into an interview with Ashbery, who graciously hosted me at his apartment in Hudson, NYC. The interview was published along with a selection of my translations of poems from his book The Double Dream of Spring in Grifo, a literary journal of the Universidad Diego Portales (Chile, 2007).

After finishing my bachelor's degree in Fine Arts, I worked as a performer for the conductor of the Chilean Symphony Orchestra, Michal Nesterowicz. Translating live his commentaries for the orchestra members during rehearsals was an inspiring experience. I also began attending Buddhist study and practice retreats in Brazil and the United States. At that time, reading works of Buddhist literature in English translation, I was possessed by the desire to learn the original languages of the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition, to nourish my own writing with that tradition of spiritual poetry and hopefully collaborate as a translator into Spanish. I studied Tibetan translation for two years in Kathmandu and then Tibetan philology and Sanskrit in Hamburg. There I co-founded (in 2015) the international author collective "Found in Translation". As a member of that collective, I co-organized WESTOPIA, Festival for a multilingual literature of the future (2001) at the Center for Literature, Burg Hülshoff, in which Chilean philosopher and translation theorist Andrés Claro participated.

I have resided as a fellow in institutions that support translation, such as the Baltic Center for Writers and Translators (Sweden) and the Looren Translators' House (Switzerland). I have been fortunate to receive work-study grants from the German Translation Funds and the Translation Support Funds of the Chilean Ministry of Culture. I have also worked for the London Symphony Orchestra as a translator of musicological essays, librettos, programs and pedagogical texts. 

The writing process of each of my poetry books has included the elaboration of anthologies of poems related to my research, which consist of my own translations. Translation has thus been, in my work as a poet, a way of composing my voice from other voices. By translating, the poet can cultivate the wonder of poetry beyond possession. By translating, the poet complexifies the meaning of expression and authorship. Together with the German poet Monika Rinck we translated my first poems published in German. Since then the correspondence with the translators of my poetry into various languages has illuminated new paths for my own writing. The portal TOLEDO published "Cluster, leaps, agenda", an essay I wrote in English about translation. I am currently preparing an anthology of translations of contemporary German poetry.

Below you can read some samples of my translations (content available only in Spanish).

I believe that translation should be a parallel melody to the creation of every poet. For my part, I practice it avidly.

My first powerful experience of translation was through the poetry of John Ashbery. At the age of 20, together with Leonardo Videla (a fellow Pablo Neruda Foundation fellow in Chile) I began translating poems by Ashbery that enchanted me with their strangeness, such as the sestina Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape. Young and unabashed, I wrote to the Nobel nominee poet telling him of my translations and my thoughts on his poetry. To my astonishment, Ashbery wrote back and we began to correspond. He told me that he was particularly interested in my comments about the influence of classical music that I perceived in his poetry. The exchange blossomed into an interview with Ashbery, who graciously hosted me at his apartment in Hudson, NYC. The interview was published along with a selection of my translations of poems from his book The Double Dream of Spring in Grifo, a literary journal of the Universidad Diego Portales (Chile, 2007).

After finishing my bachelor's degree in Fine Arts, I worked as a performer for the conductor of the Chilean Symphony Orchestra, Michal Nesterowicz. Translating live his commentaries for the orchestra members during rehearsals was an inspiring experience. I also began attending Buddhist study and practice retreats in Brazil and the United States. At that time, reading works of Buddhist literature in English translation, I was possessed by the desire to learn the original languages of the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition, to nourish my own writing with that tradition of spiritual poetry and hopefully collaborate as a translator into Spanish. I studied Tibetan translation for two years in Kathmandu and then Tibetan philology and Sanskrit in Hamburg. There I co-founded (in 2015) the international author collective "Found in Translation". As a member of that collective, I co-organized WESTOPIA, Festival for a multilingual literature of the future (2001) at the Center for Literature, Burg Hülshoff, in which Chilean philosopher and translation theorist Andrés Claro participated.

I have resided as a fellow in institutions that support translation, such as the Baltic Center for Writers and Translators (Sweden) and the Looren Translators' House (Switzerland). I have been fortunate to receive work-study grants from the German Translation Funds and the Translation Support Funds of the Chilean Ministry of Culture. I have also worked for the London Symphony Orchestra as a translator of musicological essays, librettos, programs and pedagogical texts. 

The writing process of each of my poetry books has included the elaboration of anthologies of poems related to my research, which consist of my own translations. Translation has thus been, in my work as a poet, a way of composing my voice from other voices. By translating, the poet can cultivate the wonder of poetry beyond possession. By translating, the poet complexifies the meaning of expression and authorship. Together with the German poet Monika Rinck we translated my first poems published in German. Since then the correspondence with the translators of my poetry into various languages has illuminated new paths for my own writing. The portal TOLEDO published "Cluster, leaps, agenda", an essay I wrote in English about translation. I am currently preparing an anthology of translations of contemporary German poetry.

Below you can read some samples of my translations (content available only in Spanish).