Keywords: Nature, Life, Body, Death, Sacred, International Poetry.

RASTROJOS -
Selected Poems
(1981-2019)

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Rowena Hill

English-Spanish

English and Spanish versions by the author

Foreword by Arturo Gutiérrez Plaza

2023

Hardcover   |   224 pages   |   5.5 x 8.5 inches

Paperback   |   224 pages   |   5.5 x 8.5 inches


apiñados en filas

hombres y mujeres esperan

en la calle inmunda

Un diosito falso

gordo y fofo

los ha condenado a anaqueles vacíos

y la dieta de mentiras.

La lástima encoge

el corazón,

la vergüenza se mezcla con rabia

por la impotencia.

- Rowena Hill


 

The word that seems most appropriate to approach the poetry of Rowena Hill is nature, which designates that which we cannot name because it surpasses our understanding and is only represented by the beings and things that surround us. We are inseparable from it. It’s in every particle of our bodies, and only the fact that we live inevitably as individuals prevents us from feeling that unity. The I stands in the way, but it can move aside in order to make possible an opening into the mystery of everything. This is a constant that makes Rowena Hill’s voice an exception in the Venezuelan poetry tradition she belongs to, despite coming from far away. And thus, her poetry, so earthy, so carnal, so very rooted here and beyond, awaits the study it deserves to make it available to readers who need it. It could even happen that it changes their viewpoint, a worthwhile risk for those who are more inclined to the aesthetic than to lived experience, because it’s a poetry permeated by the unknown energy that carries us like an invisible thread on which everything hangs, which we do not know, nor see, nor touch, but can glimpse. 

- Rafael Cadenas

 

Rowena Hill (Cardiff, 1938). Poet, translator, and retired professor. She has lived in Venezuela for over forty years and has published several poetry collections in Spanish. As a translator, she has turned some of Venezuela’s best-known poets into English, including Rafael Cadenas, Eugenio Montejo, and Yolanda Pantin.

 
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WILD WEST - Alejandro Castro

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AN IMPERFECT GEOMETRY -- Elisa Díaz Castelo