War
Guerra
Nothing like the threat of an all-inclusive third world war (i.e., with nuclear weapons) to make a deadly and devastating pandemic seem almost insignificant. The human mind is odd. Its…
Adriana Díaz Enciso
Bell of Rose-coloured Fire
Campana de fuego rosa
Pendant que les fonds publics s’ecoulent en fêtes de fraternité, il sonne une cloche de feu rose dans les nuages. Arthur Rimbaud Last year I applied for a grant…
Pondering on the Future
Pensar el futuro
Some weeks ago, just before the omicron wave made us the gift of this pitiful déjà vu sensation as we approached the festive season, leaving us futilely trying to pluck…
Pictures of Autumn
Estampas de otoño
for Amanda and Nick A couple of weeks after publishing in these space the second part of my reflections—my disenchantment, my sense of suffocation, my rage even—about the sorrowful state…
The Iniquitous Agony of Literature
Part Two In part one of these reflections, I discussed some of the most obvious evils that undermine literary creation nowadays: the urge to turn authors into pawns of celebrity…
The Iniquitous Agony of Literature
La inicua agonía de la literatura
Part One I must have been around eighteen when I showed up, my writings tucked under my arm, for the Elías Nandino Fine Arts literary workshop at the Ex-Convent del…
Writers (and Translators) of the World…
The other day I was about to send my translations of some poems to the online journal Asymptote, until I read in their submissions’ guidelines that they charge a fee…
Stolen Spring, Funereal Shots
We’d started to have glimmers of hope: spring, the vaccinations. Some warm days of luminous splendour and, of course, the blossoms: the first shy blooming cherry trees, the daffodils (riotously…
De consorcios editoriales y enterradores
Empecé a escribir mi novela Ciudad doliente de Dios (Alfaguara/UNAM, 2018) en 1997. Una escena apenas, ideas vagas que se concretaron en un primer borrador al año siguiente, durante una…
Desolation?
¿Desolación?
to Sandro Cohen, and all the friends mentioned here December 2020. The end of an indescribable year in which everything has happened and, at the same time, in the repetitive…
A Prodigious Dustbin Flower
Prodigiosa flor del basurero
Origins He’s a true dickensian hero. The son of Irish immigrants, he grows up in poverty in the north of London. At seven he contracts meningitis, infected by the rats…
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