Unnameable - Paperback

by Anna Gual (Author), Akaiser (Translator)

Longlisted for the 2026 National Translation Award, Unnameable is Anna Gual's debut book in English translation. Her poems express life in all its unexpectedness, whether she is exploring relationships between human beings and the rest of our universe, between and within bodies, or language itself. Scientific inquiry informs her work as she observes both the visible and the invisible. She is a leading figure in the Catalan literary world, a prolific prize-winning author of eight collections of poetry. The judges for the National Translation Award wrote: "Constantly surprising and capturing the world anew in all its strangeness, these are at once profoundly visual poems, but also delicious soundscapes of meaning." Unnameable is bilingual in Catalan and English on facing pages.

Author Biography

AKaiser, PhD, is the Pushcart Prize-nominated poet of the collection, glint, co-winner of the Milk & Cake Press Prize, and an NEA Fellowship-awarded translator of Catalan, French, and Spanish. Her current translations include the writings of transatlantic urbanista Cebrià Montoliu (1873-1923) and architect Antoni Gaudí; singer/songwriter Anahí Rayen Marilua; and the work of Mexican poet Javier Acosta Escareño. Her translations, poems, and photos appear in Circumference, Harvard Review's Omniglots Series, Hyperion, Ginosko, Pen + Brush's In Print, Poetry International, POETRY and The Rumpus. Her poem, "Astronaut, or Blues Singer" was set to music and recorded by Mel.lif.lu.ous.