Description
Poetry. Latinx Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. Women's Studies. TÍTULO / TITLE is a book of poems by the Cuban poet, prose writer, and playwright Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, published here for the first time in Spanish, and in English translation by Katherine M. Hedeen. Rodríguez Iglesias belongs to the so-called Generation Zero in Cuba, those born after 1970 and who publish after 2000. After the fall of European socialism, Generation Zero grew up with little opportunities or future and its poetry embodies the crisis. TITLE does so by affirming a poetics of ugliness—the quotidian ugliness of poverty. Material need signals spiritual need. In an experimental, asphyxiating rush of repetition and enjambment, TITLE chronicles separation, alienation, unease, madness, illness while it presents readers with a unique vision of queerness, humanity, poetry. None of it is exceptional. These poems do not fall back on exotifying stereotypes. Instead, they offer a critical perspective of all sides. There is a brilliant grayness to this poetry that rejects how Cubans are supposed to write their reality, on either side of the Gulf.
Author Bio
Katherine M. Hedeen is a translator, literary critic, and essayist. A specialist in Latin American poetry, she has translated some of the most respected voices from the region. Her publications include book-length collections by Jorgenrique Adoum, Juan Bañuelos, Juan Calzadilla, Antonio Gamoneda, Juan Gelman, Fayad Jamís, Hugo Mujica, José Emilio Pacheco, Víctor Rodríguez Núñez, and Ida Vitale, among many others. Her work has been a finalist for both the Best Translated Book Award and the National Translation Award. She is a recipient of two NEA Translation grants in the US and a PEN Translates award in the UK. She is a Managing Editor for Action Books. She resides in Ohio, where she is Professor of Spanish at Kenyon College.
Author City: NEW YORK, NY USA
Legna Rodríguez Iglesias (Camagüey) is a prize-winning Cuban poet, fiction writer, and playwright. She has published widely, including the poetry books Mi pareja calva y yo vamos a tener un hijo (Ediciones Liliputienses, 2019), Miami Century Fox (Akashic Books, 2017), and Transtucé (Editorial Casa Vacía, 2017); the short story collections La mujer que compró el mundo (Editorial Los Libros de La Mujer Rota, 2017) and No sabe/no contesta (Ediciones La Palma, 2015); and the novels Mi novia preferida fue un bulldog francés (Editorial Alfaguara, 2017), Mayonesa bien brillante (Hypermedia Ediciones, 2015), and Las analfabetas (Editorial Bokeh, 2015). Among her literary awards are the Centrigugados Prize for Younger Poets (Spain 2019), the Paz Prize (the National Poetry Series, 2017), the Casa de las Américas Prize in Theater (Cuba, 2016), and the Julio Cortázar Ibero- American Short Story Prize (2011). Spinning Mill, a chapbook of her work, has recently appeared in English translation with CardBoard House Press (2019, trans. Katerina Gonzalez Seligmann). She currently lives in Miami where she writes a column for the online journal El Estornudo.
Author City: MIAMI, FL USA