poetry

Flores Raras: [escondido país] poesía de mujeres uruguayas

(Spanish only)

Composed of poems by Uruguayan women born between 1845 and 1939, this 444 page anthology includes the work of the well-known poets Delmira Agustini, María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira, Juana de Ibarbourou, Idea Vilariño, Ida Vitale, and Circe Maia. It also includes quality poetry by 48 less-remembered women, some of them obscure even in their own time. Flores Raras is both a resurrection and a celebration.

Compilado por Silvia Guerra y Jesse Lee Kercheval con prólogo de Lucía Delbene y epílogo de María Olivera-Williams, publicado por Editorial Yaugurú y La madre del borrego, 2023 (ISBN 9789915676043).

“Este libro es, sobre todo, una manera de ver el mundo, desde la poesía, diferente de la masculina, de la privilegiada por antologías y muestras. Si Petrona Rosende es tomada como antecedente de ese punto de vista, ejemplificado por la fábula «La cotorra y los patos», en que se proclama la posibilidad de hablar pese a la censura masculina, Ana Vila es, a su vez, cifra de la búsqueda de Guerra y Kercheval de figuras desconocidas por el público lector, silenciadas u olvidadas (por ser del interior del país, por ser afrodescendientes, por no tener acceso a la publicación, por estar afuera de la corriente central de la literatura uruguaya).”
—Roberto Appratto

“Suele pensarse a las antologías como una mera recopilación de textos que tienen una temática común, plantean un perfil de una generación, o simplemente como una manera de evitar el olvido de algunos autores y textos. En este sentido, la antología tiene que ver más como un rescate y un modo de pronunciar vivamente algunos nombres que han quedado en el olvido. Más que olvido, la palabra exacta para centrarnos en esta problemática es abandono, porque muchas de estas autoras tuvieron difusión en la prensa...[y] compartía espacio con otras escritoras latinoamericanas.”
—Yanina Vidal

“[S]e trata de una publicación muy necesaria y probablemente una de las más importantes de los últimos años, al menos en lo que refiere a poesía nacional. No parece exagerado decir que Flores raras no debería faltar en la biblioteca de cualquier interesado o interesada en la producción lírica uruguaya, que, como cualquier producción cultural en la historia de la humanidad, se ve escandalosamente incompleta sin el aporte de las mujeres.”
—Mariana Figueroa Dacasto, La Diaria (Montevideo)

Fierce Voice
Voz Feroz

(bilingual, Spanish/English)

An anthology of twenty-six contemporary Argentine and Uruguayan women poets who published after their countries' return to democracy in the 1980s.

Edited by Curtis Bauer, Lisa Rose Bradford, and Jesse Lee Kercheval, and published by the University of New Mexico Press, 2023, (ISBN 9780826365361).

Mis Razones: mujeres poetas del Uruguay

(Spanish only)

An anthology of twenty-four essays by twenty-one Uruguayan women poets of the 19th and 20th centuries on writing, writers, and literature, mostly concerning Uruguayan poetry but also including essays on Shakespeare and Rilke.

Compilado por Jesse Lee Kercheval y Virginia Lucas y publicado por la Biblioteca Nacional de Uruguay, 2019, (ISBN 9789974726116).

Cuenta con la introducción de Maria Rosa Olivera-Williams e incluye ensayos de Cristina Peri Rossi, Maria Eugenia Vaz Ferreira, Susana Soca, Luisa Luisi, Juana de Ibarbourou, Silvia Guerra, Tatiana Oroño, Marosa di Giorgio, Circe Maia, Delmira Agustini, Laura Cesarco Eglin, Paola Gallo, Idea Vilariño, Mariella Nigro, Esther de Cáceres, Clara Silva, Martha Canfield, Amanda Berenguer y Sara de Ibáñez.

Trusting on the wide air: poems of Uruguay
Confiado a un amplio aire

(bilingual, Spanish/English)

Edited by Laura Chalar and Jesse Lee Kercheval, published in 2019 in the United States by Diálogos (ISBN 9781944884659) and in Uruguay by Editorial Yaugurú (ISBN 9789974890404).

“For readers who’ve never visited the smallest country in South America, this anthology offers rich insight into a new destination; for those well-versed with the country, the book offers a study of Uruguay renewed. Moving from description to declaration, meditation to assertion, Trusting on the wide air: poems of Uruguay’s greatest gift, perhaps, is that its poetry transcends the record of landscape and memory.”
—Shara Lessley

“More than one hundred years of extraordinary poets fill these pages.… From the long-established resident to the nostalgic emigrant and the enamored visitor, these authors paint with verse their impressions of the music of candombe and the rituals of daily life, the architecture and history of Montevideo with its Parisian splendor and urban squalor, the sea of a river that forms its port and bay, and the flora and fauna that grace its countryside.”
—Lisa Rose Bradford

“[L]a selección sale bastante bien parada teniendo en cuenta lo ambicioso de la empresa, dado que se incluyen poetas tan fundacionales como Julio Herrera y Reissig, sin olvidar clásicos posteriores como Idea Vilariño o la recientemente galardonada con el premio Cervantes Ida Vitale, así como otros contemporáneos y jóvenes, como Virginia Lucas y Horacio Cavallo. No falta algún que otro “rescate”, como los textos de Emilio Frugoni, cuya faceta de poeta es muy poco recordada en comparación a su carrera política.”
—Mariana Figueroa Dacasto, La Diaria

América invertida: An Anthology of Younger Uruguayan Poets

(bilingual, Spanish/English)

Edited by Jesse Lee Kercheval and published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2016 (ISBN 9780826357250).

This bilingual anthology includes 22 Uruguayan poets under 40, each matched with an American poet/translator.

“This superbly edited anthology breaks new ground. North Americans and Anglophones with diverse interests will come to this trove of new writing with gratitude. Not only have we lacked access to this era of Uruguayan poetry, but the poems themselves are brilliant—and the translations crisp and surefooted.”
—Peter Thompson

“These poets are mystic, down-to-earth, demanding, reserved, ecstatic, intimate, and prophetic, turn by turn by turn. The poet-translators who bring them into English perform correspondingly modest or audacious sleights of hand.… One feels briefly enveloped in these poets’ iridescing wings and is left with keener eyes to trace their rising, particular flights.”
—Joyelle Mcsweeney

Tierra, cielo y agua
Earth, Water and Sky

(bilingual, Spanish/English)

Edited by Jesse Lee Kercheval and published in 2016 in Uruguay by Editorial Yaugurú (ISBN 9789974719422) and in the United States by Diálogos Books (ISBN 9781944884147).

In 2015 the South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies (SARAS) sponsored a competition for ecological poetry from Uruguay and Argentina. Poetry by the three winners (Natalia Romero, Sebastián Rivero, Virginia Lucas) and seven other poets (Martín Barea Mattos, Luis Bravo, Ignacio Fernández de Palleja, Elena Lafert, Mariela Laudecina, Tatiana Oroño, and María Sánchez) was translated into English and published in bilingual editions in Uruguay and the United States.

“Earth, Water and Sky: An Anthology of Environmental Poetry is an incredibly moving synthesis of art and the issues that beset environmental studies. The combination of contemporary artists with contemporary issues makes this issue exceptionally relevant. SARAS goal, using poetry to exhibit nature and the hopes for a sustainable future, is wonderfully executed in Kercheval’s arrangement of these award winning works and their translations.”
—Kayla Rodriguez

“This bilingual anthology … provides necessary glimpses into South American environmental poetry. Along with earth, water and sky, weasels, otters, and tourists with cameras inhabit these poems, as well as ‛little urban rivers along the unpaved streets,’ as Virginia Lucas (translated by Jen Hofer) writes. These eco-poems remind us that eco-consciousness must be global as well as home-grown.”
–Sharon Dolin