Translations from Latin America

Translated from Spanish by Kathleen Snodgrass

Published 2024. Paperback, 172pp, 9 x 6ins, £14.95 / $23. Bilingual edition.

ISBN 9781848619302 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

“Luis Miguel Aguilar’s work is a conversation, between the past and the present, between the educated and the lay person, between useless details and essentials, between erudite data and the vital impulse. It is not a spur of the moment conversation, but one that arises from the serenity of an extended, long-term approach, tying up loose ends and giving rise to complete, complex and exalted theories.” —Juan Manuel Gómez 

“There are poets who are born mature, broad-browed and clear of vision. Luis Miguel Aguilar is one of them. Each book is a gift full of surprises, riddles and enigmas that invite the reader to reread, drop by drop, to savour them: there is an erudite, cultured, referential voice; then there is a more melodic, simple voice that recites ballads and popular songs; and finally there is the intimate monologue, which deals with the familiar terroir and tries to decipher the meaning of life, with all its furies and its sorrows.” —Arturo Dávila

Translated from Spanish by Timothy Adès, with Gloria Carnevali. Bilingual edition.

Published 2014. Paperback, 116pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £12.95 / $20

ISBN 9781848613485 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

Florentino and the Devil , a famous poem in Venezuela, is the story of a poetic duel, a contrapunteo , between Florentino, a llanero (a cattleman of the plains) and The Devil. Singing to a traditional joropo accompaniment on harp, four-stringed guitar and maracas, the contenders improvise rapid rhymes, trading thrust and counterthrust like swordsmen, showing off their mastery and boasting of their accomplishments, each trying to reduce the other to silence.

Translated from Spanish by Paul Hoover. Bilingual edition.

Published 2017. Paperback, 94pp, 9 x 6ins, £10.95 / $18

ISBN 9781848615434 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

María Baranda is one of the leading Mexican poets of the generation born in the 1960s. Her work has received Mexico’s distinguished Efraín Huerta and Aguascalientes national poetry prizes, as well as Spain’s Francisco de Quevedo Prize for Ibero-American Poetry. She is increasingly known for her sweeping and incisive long poems and book-length projects, and this volume contains two such works: 'To Tell' and the title poem.

Edited by Tony Frazer. English only.

Translated from Spanish by Anamaría Crowe Serrano, Ruth Fainlight, 

John Oliver Simon, Michael Smith & Luis Ingelmo.

Published 2009. Paperback, 126pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £12.95 / $20

ISBN 9781905700479 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

Elsa Cross (b. 1946) is one of Mexico's most significant contemporary poets, and this is the first full-length collection of her work in English—a long overdue but welcome opportunity for Anglo-American readers to get a sense of the full breadth of her work. The work selected for this volume concentrates on her longer poems, which are at the core of Elsa Cross' work—ranging from the remarkable 'Bacchantes', which dates from the late '70s and early '80s and offered here in full, through 'Malabar Canto'—suffused with the spirit of India—to the odes, dithyrambs and elegies of the recent Greek-inflected works. Elsa Cross' work is typified by its strong metaphysical orientation, coupled with a dazzling surface and remarkable imagery, and offers the English-speaking reader a new experience. A poetry to be savoured, thanks to the efforts of the five translators at work here, all of whom worked closely with the author to bring these poems successfully across the language barrier.

Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel. Bilingual edition.

Published 2019. Paperback, 104pp, 9 x 6ins, £10.95 / $18

ISBN 9781848616509 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

The open mouth of the Orcus, in the front-cover photograph, represents an entrance to the underworld, according to all the symbolism embedded in the Gardens of Bomarzo, built in the 16th Century, in central Italy. And this book actually seems to play with different strata of reality and perception, as well as different states of the mind – as well as the soul. It proceeds from the concrete to the oneiric; from the past, constantly weighting down the present, to the timeless moment that perhaps in the final poems gives meaning to – or annihilates – all the dense phantasmagoria that courses through its pages.

Translated from Spanish by Adam Feinstein. With an introduction by Daisy Zamora.

Published May 2024. Paperback, 220pp, 9 x 6ins, £14.95 / $24. Bilingual edition.

ISBN 9781848618756

Pablo Antonio Cuadra (1912–2002) was one of Nicaragua's great 20th century poets. In this lyrical epic, the inevitable Homeric background for the tale of wandering sailor underpins the contemporary Nicaraguan reality of The Great Lake (Lake Nicaragua – the "sweet sea" of the title), rather than the Aegean. The language is deceptively colloquial, plain even, as befits the real people of his narrative, but he reveals the richness of life on the Lake and makes of the sailors and their families as epic a tale as any that went before. This is the first complete translation of the book.

Translated from Spanish by Urayoán Noel. Bilingual edition.

Published 2018. Paperback, 292pp, 9 x 6ins, £16.95 / $25

ISBN 9781848613775 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

Pablo de Rokha was one of the great Chilean modernists, but he is arguably known more for his feud with Pablo Neruda and Vicente Huidobro than for his vast and remarkable poetry. De Rokha is relatively unknown outside Chile, and this volume redresses that by offering an introduction to this astonishing body of work, the first comprehensive selection in English. Daniel Borzutkzy calls this book "an event, a monumental work of translation and poetry that will force us to rethink our understanding of global modernism and the hemispheric avant-garde."

Translated from Spanish by Mark Schafer. Bilingual edition.

Published 2004. Paperback, 9.25 x 7.5ins. 400pp. £19.95. OUT OF PRINT.

ISBN 9780907562498. New revised edition now available from NYRB Press, New York.

Migrations is a long poem, the final version of which runs to seven books. The first six were published in Mexico City in a single volume in 2002 by the Fondo de Cultura Económica. This volume presents the complete original text of Migraciones, with recent revisions, plus the seventh book, hitherto only available in a limited-edition chapbook, together with Mark Schafer's inspired translation of the entire text.



Translated from Spanish by Peter Boyle. Bilingual edition.

Published 2011. Paperback, 268pp, 9x6ins, £14.95 / $23

ISBN 9781848611467 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

A sixty-year-old man writes a poem and entitles it 'Anima'. Days later he writes another poem with a tone similar to the first, entitles it 'Anima', then realises he has just begun a series which must all bear the same title.

     Furthermore, the man decides that in the future and till the day of his death he is going to continue writing poems that, since they have this tone, will bear the title 'Anima'. At the end of a year, having written some 150 poems, he extracts from the accumulated mass 60 poems called 'Anima'. (José Kozer)

Translated from Spanish by Peter Boyle. English-only.  

Published 2014. Paperback, 144pp, 9 x 6ins, £12.95 / $20

ISBN 9781848613850 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

This is the same book as the one shown above, but without the Spanish texts, and at a slightly more attractive price for those not requiring the original versions.

Translated from Spanish by Kelsi Vanada

Publication 2024. Paperback, ca. 100pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £10.95 / $18

ISBN 9781848619371

The title of Basket of Braids forms a surprising image. Why would anyone store braided hair in a basket? “The women in my family / keep the hair / they cut off / in a basket of braids. // It’s an ancient tradition, / no one can remember / who started it.”

          For Belarusian poet Natalia Litvinova, who immigrated with her family to Buenos Aires at the age of ten, this basket of braids symbolizes the strength of the bonds between the rural Slavic women who came before her—and her own link to her heritage across time and space. 

          Litvinova’s poems evoke memories of the culture and place that shaped her through dense lines rich with imagery. Each poem is a jewel, a talisman, a spell, often lingering on relationships between Litvinova’s ancestors and the land they were tied to, its flora and fauna: “Our lives / are full / of distances / even horses / can’t shorten.”

Appearing for the first time in English translation by Kelsi Vanada, Basket of Braids gives readers an intimate experience of one poet’s memory and heritage, held in language like amber.

Translated from Spanish by Jason Stumpf. English only.

Published 2007. Paperback, 112pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £10.95 / $18.

ISBN 9781905700387 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

Aurora was first published in Mexico City in 1994 by Ediciones Equilibrista, and was the author's third full-length collection. Her entire output has since been collected in Mexico in a single volume Música inaudita.

Translated from Spanish by Anna Deeny. Bilingual volume.

Published 2020. Paperback, 96pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £10.95. Not for sale in North America.

ISBN 9781848617001 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

Diana's Tree is an important book — written in Paris, where she lived for four years — and the first really mature work (1963) by Alejandra Pizarnik (1936-1972), increasingly recognised as one of the major poetic voices of the second half of the 20th century in Latin America. 

Translated from Spanish by Anna Deeny. English only.

Published 2015. Paperback, 104pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £10.95 / $18 

ISBN9781848613720 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]



Floating Lanterns , her eighth poetry collection, Mercedes Roffé draws from a range of creation myths, sacred texts, philosophy and poetry that meditates upon human nature and our propensity for evil. She brings together Buddhism, Tibetan Yoga, the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Kabbalah, Plato's Republic, T. S. Eliot, Beat poets, the oral traditions of Medieval Spain and North American indigenous cosmogonies.What binds these diverse materials is Roffé's use of anaphora.

Translated from Spanish by Janet Greenberg, with the author. English only.

Published 2008. Paperback, 84pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £10.95 / $18.

ISBN 9781905700554 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

Like the Rains Come. Selected Poems (1987–2006) is Mercedes Roffé's first book-length collection published in English. Including poems from one of her earliest books, The Lower Chamber (1983), which placed her among the most innovative Latin American poets of the 80s, as well as the series 'Mayan Definitions' — her internationally-acclaimed poems from La ópera fantasma (2006) — Like the Rains Come introduces a broad spectrum of Roffé's compelling and protean poetics to the English-language reader.



Translated from Spanish by Terence Dooley

Publication 2024. Paperback, 200pp, 9 x 6ins, £14.95 / $23

ISBN 9781848619364

Tien Mai, the poet-narrator of Daniel Samoilovich’s book-length sequence, Awaking Demons, is a self-exiled Vietnamese princeling grumpily eking out a hotel life in 1930s Switzerland. ‘Here/ where even the butterflies are different’ is a source of amusement and amazement to him as he details the behaviour of the hotel servants and the other guests, and the strange local customs. But more often his mind turns to the woman he has left behind: ‘The distance between us is greater/than the empire of night’, and to the consolations of Eastern art, especially the poets of the Tang dynasty, Wang Wei, Du Mu and Li Po. Like them, he stands at his lectern with his brushes, composing in meticulous calligraphy, in perfect ideograms, poems of nature, philosophy, memory and love, though against the backdrop of the Swiss lakes rather than the Yangtze river. Tien Mai is a rounded and subtle creation – querulous, humorous, cynical, profound, whimsical, romantic – and rather a wonderful lyric poet.

Translated from Spanish by Terence Dooley

Published 2023. Paperback, 214pp, 9x6ins, £14.95 / $23. Bilingual edition.

ISBN 9781848618107 [Download a sample PDF from this book here .]

The Enchanted Isles begins with a dream in which Oh, the narrator, returns to a voyage he made to the Galápagos (known as enchanted because of their dangerous currents that lured seamen to their deaths) ten years earlier. It was to be a voyage of enchantment, a lovers’ voyage, an eight-day cruise paid for by a magical win at roulette, the number eight coming up eight times in a row.

      But Ah and Oh have separated in the meantime and so the memory dream is shot through with regret and also with a sometimes nightmarish vision of the ugly black volcanic islands where Darwin, observing mutations in finches, first came up with the idea of evolution.

      In a multi-themed jazz rondo form, extracts from Darwin’s writings, geometry, chance and fate, giant tortoises complaining of human depredation, iguanas, jellyfish, blades of grass, extinct volcanoes, scuba diving and tender tourist conversation dance round and round. Occasionally the music breaks down and stutters, we are hearing dissonance as well as secret harmonies. This is a work of great lyricism, teasing humour and complex originality, a poem of everything.

Translated from Spanish by Tony Frazer
Published 2022. Paperback, 328pp, 9 x 6ins, £16.95 / $25.

ISBN 9781848618084 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

Volodia Teitelboim knew Huidobro when the poet returned to Chile from Paris after the Great Depression began. A tyro poet himself, and a committed leftist, the author was to fall out with Huidobro before the end of the decade, but not before co-editing the groundbreaking Anthology of New Chilean Poetry in 1935, which foregrounded Huidobro's work. Poet, novelist and essayist, as well as, eventually, leader of Chile's Communist Party, Teitelboim is an excellent and often amusing guide to his mercurial subject, and offers a plethora of stories and anecdotes from those who knew Huidobro well, as well as recalled conversations with the great man himself. This book was the third of Teitelboim's poet biographies, following books devoted to Neruda and Mistral.

Translated from Spanish by Michael Smith & Luis Ingelmo. English only.

Published 2009. Paperback, 124pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £12.95 / $20

ISBN 9781848610569 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

Verónica Volkow is one of Mexico's most significant poets in the post-Paz period. The centrepiece of the book is her astonishing sequence Arcana, with one poem for each card in the Tarot pack. Other long poems are featured, together with some shorter lyrics to give an overview of this remarkable poet's oeuvre.