Poems of Mijail Lamas, Mario Bojórquez & Alí Calderón

Poems of Mijail Lamas, Mario Bojórquez & Alí Calderón
(Americas Series 2)
Translated from Spanish by Mario Licón Cabrera.
Introduction by Gustavo Osorio

This second collection in Vagabond’s Americas Series presents a unique trío of voices from contemporary Mexico giving English-language readers a taste of the vibrancy of Mexican poetry after Octavio Paz. Gathering together translations by Mario Licón Cabrera from Mijail Lamas’s Countersummer, Mario Bojórquez’s To Speak Shadows and Alí Calderón’s The Correspondences, this is an essential introduction to twenty-first century Mexican poetry.

'Mexico has a thriving, vast and rich poetic ecosystem. There is the immersive, Neo-Baroque writing of Coral Bracho; the narrative poetry of Tedi López Mills; Mónica Nepote’s visceral, body imagery; the intimate verses of Nadia Escalante; Gabriel Zaid, Óscar Cid de León, Hernán Bravo Varela, Carla Faesler; the list goes on. This anthology provides a limited but satisfying taste, eclectic in its choices, and highly recommended.' Gabriel García Ochoa reviews Poems of Mijail Lamas, Mario Bojórques & Alí Calderón in Cordite.

“The poems from Countersummer seem to be built around one scene: the poet, far away from his native city, writes about his links with the past – childhood, family, those streets in sepia ... a cycle of poems about the difficulties of nostalgia, that, in the motive of heat, condenses a lyrical examination of an inner world.”  

 Geney Beltrán (La gaceta, México)

“In Mario Bojórquez the immateriality of the symbol becomes tangible, the rhythm is charged with spirituality like a flame suspended over the mouth of time, his chants comes and goes from Nature to Men. The poet of To Speak Shadows uses his own flesh to raise this offering to the highest dream.”  

Luis David Palacios (Andraval, México)

“Alí Calderón, breaks frequently with language and syntax, especially in his poems of love and lack of love, but he keeps in mind that this work of destruction doesn’t stop his writing to become an arrow that pierces the readers’ heart. In his notable love poems there’s the sadness that diminishes, the pain that tears apart or brakes, the humiliation of failure, the defeat that at the end of the day is the only thing worthwhile. The Correspondences is a book of splendid maturity”     

Marco Antonio Campos (Visor Libros, España)

Mijail Lamas (Culiacán, Sinaloa. 1979) Poet, translator and literary critic. He has published three collections of poetry. In 2012 he was awarded the Clemencia Isaura Poetry Prize for his book Trevas (Canción del navegante de sí mismo).  He is considered amongst one of the most relevant forty young poets writing in Spanish today. He was the Senior editor of The Río Grande Review, University of  El Paso, Texas, and is one of the editors of Círculo de Poesía. His poetry has been translated into several languages and included in many anthologies, both national and word wide. The poems included here are from his book Contraverano / Countersummer, published by Fondo Eitorial Tierrra Adentro, México, in 2007.  

Mario Bojórquez (Los Mochis, Sinaloa, 1968). Poet, essayist and translator. Studied Hispanic Language and Literature at UNAM. He has published eight collections of poetry, amongst them Hablar Sombras (2013) and Memorial de Ayotzinapa (2016) and  Aquí todo es memoria, 25 Years of Poetry, (anthology 2016). He has been awarded the most prestigious poetry prizes such as the Abigael Bohórquez Poetry Prize (1996), the National Poetry Prize Aguascalientes (2007), the National Prize for Literary Essay José Revueltas (2010), the Alhambra Prize for American Poetry (2012), the Distinction Prince and Poet Tecayehuatzin de Huexotzinco (2012) and The Ignacio Rodríguez Galván Medal (2015). Since 2007 is part of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte. He is the editor of the online literary magazine www.circulodepoesia.com, and director, together with poet Alí Calderón, of the Valparaíso México Series, and The International Poetry Festival CDMX. The poems included here are from the collection Hablar Sombras / To Speak Shadows, first published in 2013 by Andraval Ediciones, México.

Alí Calderón (México City 1982) poet and literary critic. He completed a Doctorate in Literature at UNAM. He received the National Poetry Prize Ramón López Velarde and the Latin American Poetry Prize Benemérito de América. In 2015 VISOR (Spain) published his most recent poetry collection LAS CORRESPONDECIAS / THE CORRESPONDENCES, from which the poems included here are taken. He’s the director of the online magazine Círculo de Poesía and co-director of Valparaiso México Press and the International Poetry Festival CDMX. Editor of Poéticas Revista de Estudios Literarios published by universities from Europe, USA and Latin America. He’s a member of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores. His most recent books of literary essays are: Del poema al transtexto Essays on how to read Mexican poetry, Colombia, 2015) and Reinventando el Lirismo (Spain, 2015, México, 2016).

Gustavo Osorio (Puebla, México, 1986) completed a BA in Linguistics and Hispanic Literature (2011) and a Masters in Mexican Literature (2014) at the BUAP, receiving a Cum Laude mention in both. He is currently working on a PhD in Hispanic American Literature. He was awarded the Philosophy and Letters Prize for Poetry in 2008. In 2012 he published Bonapartes, his first collection of poems and in 2015 Reinventar el Lirismo, a book of essays on poetics (together with Alí Calderón). He has translated poetry from French and English into Spanish, more recently Almuerzo con Pancho Villa by Paul Mudoon published by Valparaiso. He is part of the editing board of the French-Marrocan poetry magazine Electon Libre and the academic magazine Poeticas.

Mario Licón Cabrera (Chihuahua, México, 1949) is a poet and translator. He has published four collections of poetry including Yuxtas (Back&Forth), a bilingual edition with the support of Australian Council for the Arts in 2009. He has translated many Australian leading poets into Spanish amongst them Dorothy Porter, Judith Beveridge, Peter Boyle, Ali Cobby Eckerman, Robert Adamson, Michelle Cahill and many more. He is a regular contributor for two Mexican magazines (DosFilos and Círculo de Poesía) as well as for the Australian online magazine Mascara Literary Review. He won the Premio de Poesia Trilce (Australia, 2015). Lives in Sydney.

Poems of MijaIl Lamas, Mario Bojórquez & Alí Calderón
(The Americas Poetry Series 2)
Translated from Spanish by Mario Licón Cabrera.
Introduction by Gustavo Osorio.
February 2017. 118pp. 190mm x 120mm. ISBN 978-1-922181-97-8