The New York City launching of Escritas em transito. Cinco poetas cubanas em Nova Iorque, a bilingual anthology (Spanish/Portuguese) bringing together the poetry of Magali Alabau, Alina Galliano, Lourdes Gil, Maya Islas, and Iraida Iturralde, five Cuban poets who arrived as children or teenagers in the U.S., where they have studied and emerged as poets, with the exceptional singularity of having chosen Spanish as their literary form of expression. The volume, published by Gradiva Editorial in Rio de Janeiro, has been compiled by literary critic Elena Palmero, who also provides a comprehensive introduction, and is enhanced by flawless translations by the Argentinian-Brazilian poet Paloma Vidal.
Inspired by earlier volumes published by Editorial Betania (1988, 2009) in Spain, Palmero’s edition proposes a new reading of the authors’ poems, with an extensive diachronic overview of each poet’s oeuvre, including unpublished texts. The anthology captures the trans-territorial and trans-cultural fluctuation and fluidity in their poetry, so characteristic in contemporary literature and, most especially, in Cuban culture. Hence the suggestive title that these poets are in transit, leaving in passing the footprints of their trajectory: the skyline of Manhattan, a planeload of children, a raft adrift, paradigmatic images of Cuban history in the last six decades. But their poems also display a far-reaching cartography of surreal cities, spaces conjured up by memory or by the imagination, providing an alternative universe, yet with the ever present allusion to the matriarchal Island of Cuba, whose coordinates are redefined from afar, ultimately reaching a metaphysical dimension.
The presentation will be followed by a Q&A with the editor and with some of the poets in attendance. Moderated by Prof. Elena Martínez, of the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature at Baruch College.
This literary event is part of the CreateNYC Language Access program, and it will be held in Spanish, followed by a bilingual Q&A in Spanish and Portuguese.
BARUCH COLLEGE
VC-13 Room 150
Lexington at 25th Street, NYC
SPACE IS LIMITED
Elena Palmero González is a Cuban essayist living
in Brazil since 1999, where she is a professor of
Latin American Literature at the Universidade Federal
do Rio de Janeiro. She has a PhD in Philology from
the Universidad Central de Las Villas, Cuba, and did
post-doctoral work at the Paris IV-Sorbonne, at the
Universidade de Sao Paulo (Brazil) and at
Yale University (the latter with a CAPES research
fellowship). She has published widely in Latin America,
Europe and Canada.
This event is presented in association with the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature at Baruch College
And is supported by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
With the promotional collaboration of
