About Telúrika

hello, there!

i’m Esther, the Telúrika handyperson!

i am a white person, non-disabled, non-binary, dyke and libertarian. i use any pronoun (they/she/he), as long as i understand that the conversation is with me.

i have a degree in English (Wizard language school) and Spanish (teacher Isabel Antunez) and a Bachelor of Arts in Languages [Brazilian Portuguese and French] (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul - UFRGS).
the writer and translator piece that inhabits me is very important, but i have also been a model, i have done theater, i have worked with public attendance, and i have done many other things... i love to dance, to cook, to be close to my friends, to study, to bathe in the sun and moon, and to feed my soul with beauties that stimulate my taste for writing!

beyond the enchantment with reading and writing since i was very young, i believe that the craftsmanship of communication is a process of connection with the body as an ancestral memory, as an entity that houses spirit, mind, and physical confluences of feel and senses.

body translations are recorded in oral and written translations and build communication. dealing with information is a great responsibility, so i work from the perspective of the Pindo-pretu-guesa language (an acronym for the words pindoramic [something or someone from Pindó reta], black person [preto], and Portuguese), because i believe that what they call the Brazilian Portuguese language is a set of linguistic confluences of many people from Pindó reta ("Brazil") and people in diaspora, especially Afrikan people. there are many languages existing in a language that is said to be one one, "heiress of Portugal".

libertarian translation is my translation position because i base my path of meaning choices on plurality, diversity, historical, philosophical, psychological, and political dissidents, and countercultural intersubjectivities, not strictly on colonial grammar. this means that, in order to adapt commas and words according to dictionaries and grammars, i work with concepts and words that are built in collectivities outside of colonial academic rigidity. i believe in many possibilities for communicating. i do not believe in "right" and "wrong" ways to speak because there are countless speeches! the production context of these speeches is what will modulate the senses involved.

(here, from page 188, there is a more elaborate explanation about my understanding of language and translation, and from page 191, on the language pindo-pretu-guesa specifically)

i think it is important to position myself politically in relation to linguistic know-how because it is impossible to speak from a "neutral" and "impartial" place. this is a liberal lie. every person who speaks is only able to speak because before them, other people already spoke and had already built everything we historically and culturally know as language.

Telúrika has existed since 2018 and has moved since then because of indications and recommendations from people who had direct contact with me. i had been germinating the idea of organizing my work through an online social tool, which materializes on this site as my workspace.

why the name Telúrika?
“Telúrika” is the English word “telluric”. i have a precious connection to the earth. i believe that writing is like planting. it is necessary to look for the seeds, prepare the soil, plant the seeds, take care of the growth processes — watering, pruning when necessary, observing whether sunlight is sufficient or excessive —, wait for the seeds to sprout, harvest, and then prepare food, drinks, medicines, housing, tools, clothing, ornaments...

steps are not skipped when caring for the earth or sowing the word.

telluric is an adjective that characterizes what comes from the Earth, from the soil.
this adjective is usually used to talk about telluric planets — those that are closer to the Sun —, of telluric currents — electric currents that exist within the Earth — and of telluric spectral rays — luminous lines that show the energetic transition of an atom distant from the Earth. it also characterizes stories based on telurism, a literary expression in which nature acts strongly in people’s lives and can be considered a character in history.

all this solar-earth-transitory energy is what keeps the word moving. germinate the word from root to tip of leaves, flowers, fruits, and syllables to feed the boldness of thinking to themselves and the worlds with the entrails, in the dark and lucid. the ability to express through language something that is intelligible, that opens spaces of listening, speaking, and understanding, is what allows us to destroy the restriction that relegates us to the madness of the unspeakable.