Jennifer KellerPatricio Ferrari
Patricio Ferrari is a polyglot poet, literary translator, and editor born in Argentina to Italian immigrants. He embarked on a transformative linguistic journey at the age of 16 with the Rotary Club International, attending high school and then college on the East Coast on a soccer scholarship. In 2001, after nearly a decade in the U.S. and receiving a BA in Philosophy and French, Patricio left to explore India for six months, attend the Kumbh Mela and learn Hindi. The following year he settled in Paris to deepen his relationship with the French language and poetry, and obtained an MA in Comparative Literature from Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. In 2006, Fernando Pessoa’s plural voices beckoned him to Lisbon, where he resided for the next nine eight years, immersing himself in the Portuguese language and culture. He transcribed unpublished Pessoa writings, edited several of his books, and earned a PhD from Universidade de Lisboa with a dissertation on the role of metrics in Pessoa’s trilingual poetry and the shaping of his heteronyms. Returning to the U.S. in 2014, he attained an MFA in Poetry at Brown University. As a translator and literary editor, Patricio has published 20 works, including The Galloping Hour: French Poems by Alejandra Pizarnik, The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos by Pessoa, both with New Directions, and Habla terreña by Frank Stanford (Pre-textos, 2023). His work has been featured in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Review of Books, among others. Patricio teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and Rutgers University, enjoys an ongoing collaboration with the Endangered Language Alliance, and hosts the “World Poetry in Translation” reading series in NYC, celebrating foreign poets and translators. He just completed “Mud,” the first volume of his “Elsehere” multilingual poetry trilogy.
