Description
Drawn initially from a transcript of a reading given at Swedenborg House on 22 May 2012, this expanded edition features 7 new poems in addition to the original 16. The new poems include ‘SWEDENBORG’, ‘Levitations’, ‘The Creation of the World by the Animals (according to the Popol Vuh)’, ‘Discreation’ and ‘Signs of the Last Judgement, According to Gonzalo de Berceo’ amongst others. An essential collection for English and Spanish readers , all poems are printed in the original Spanish with an accompanying English translation. At the end of the volume is printed a Q&A with Homero transcribed from the first reading in 2012.
‘Homero Aridjis’ poems open a door into light.’—Seamus Heaney
Praise for Homero Aridjis
From Octavio Paz: ‘In the poetry of Homero Aridjis there is the gaze, the pulse of the poet, the discontinuous time of practical and rational life and the continuity of desire and death: there is the poet’s primal truth.’
From Yves Bonnefoy: ‘A great flame passes through the words, the poetry of Homero Aridjis, who sets reality alight in images that at once illuminate and consume it, making life a sister of dream. Homero is a great poet; our century has great need of him.’
From J M G Le Clézio: ‘Aridjis’s work is built on this intuitive sense that at times touches on the realm of dreams, or as Luis Buñuel said of Aridjis’s Moctemzuma, “The sense of waking from a nightmare”, and moves from the singular to the universal. ’
About the author
HOMERO ARIDJIS won a scholarship from the Mexican Writers’ Center at the age of 19, and in 1964 was the youngest-ever recipient of the Xavier Villaurrutia Award for best book of the year. After two years in Europe on a Guggenheim fellowship, he served as ambassador to Switzerland and then The Netherlands while still in his thirties. Back in Mexico, in 1985 Aridjis and 99 other renowned artists and intellectuals founded the legendary Group of 100, an activist organization that addresses national and international environmental issues. Between 1997 and 2003 he served two terms as president of PEN International. He was Mexico’s ambassador to UNESCO from 2007 until 2010, and since then has lived in Mexico City. Aridjis has published 51 volumes of poetry, fiction, children’s books, essays, and plays. His work has been translated into twenty languages and recognized with literary prizes such as the Grinzane Cavour (Italy), the Prix Roger-Caillois (France), the Smederevo Golden Key, three international poetry prizes in Italy and the Griffin Poetry Prize (Canada). Recent books in English translation include The Child Poet (2016), News of the Earth (2017), Maria the Monarch (2017), Smyrna in Flames (2021) and Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence (2023).
Swedenborg House paperbacks series
An Angel Speaks: Selected Poems is the second in a series of new Swedenborg House paperbacks, following Stephen McNeilly’s Concerning an idea about place: Swedenborg’s Summerhouse (2024).
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