Overview

"Arrowsmith Press is honored to announce the publication of Nidia Hern�ndez's first collection of poems, The Farewell Light. This bilingual edition leaps effortlessly between the natural world and meditations on culture, family, language, and longing. Hernández's work moves the reader beyond the realm of the individual poet toward a deeper human understanding: ""I cried until I was water/ until I was sea/ and I began to swim/ toward the depths."" A recent Venezuelan immigrant to America, Hernández bridges the gulf between her two countries as she laments, ""What I thought lost/ is in the light of this dawn/ I'm not alone/ emptiness is only emptiness/ the sea speaks to me."" Hernández's self-possessed poetic voice reflects her decades of engagement with poetry, across languages and continents, pointing out that, ""if not understanding each other is the constant/ why should not speaking the same language/ have to be a disaster?"" Brilliantly rendered from the Spanish by esteemed translator Rowena Hill, The Farewell Light is a debut not to be missed."

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"""Can you discern the garden's gaze? Or read the book the rain is writing? Are you aware of the shortcuts of silence that time sometimes seeks? Nidia Hern�ndez is a mystic of here and now. When so many of us are in exile, from our countries, from ourselves, these poems remind us that we might find home by standing still. (Listen, a prayer knocked on the door and no one wanted to open it.). Do you want to feel alive? Do you want to become aware of senses you did not know you had? Open the door; read these poems."" - Marie Howe"

Author Information

Nidia Hern�ndez was born in Venezuela and has been living in the US since 2018. She is a poet, translator of Portuguese poetry, editor, broadcaster, and radio producer. Her editorial project lamajadesnuda.com won the 2011 world Summit Awards, and her radio program (also called La Maja Desnuda) has presented works from the last 35 years with more than 1,820 broadcasts. Currently, she is broadcasting the program through UPV Radio 102.5 FM Spain. She curates Poesiaudio (Arrowsmith Press, Boston), is a co-editor for Mercurius Magazine, a UK publication based in Barcelona, Spain, and belongs to the Board of Directors of New England Poetry Club. Hern�ndez is the winner of the 2021 Sundara Ramaswamy Prize for her editorial work on The Land of Mild Light by Rafael Cadenas. In 2022, she published a new anthology, The Invisible Borders of Time: Five Female Latin American Poets (Arrowsmith), which won the 2023 Mass Poetry Community Award. Rowena Hill was born in England in 1938, and went to school in New Zealand. She attended universities in New Zealand, Italy and India (University of Mysore). She taught English Literature at the Universidad de Los Andes in M�rida, Venezuela, where she has lived for forty-eight years. She has published six books of poems in Spanish: Celebraciones, Ida y Vuelta, Legado de Sombras, No es tarde para alabar, Planta baja del cerebro/ Ground Floor of the Brain (bilingual), Marea tard�a/ Late Tide (bilingual), and the bilingual selected poems Rastrojos (Alliteration, Miami, 2023) as well as poems, essays and translations in periodicals in Venezuela, Colombia, India, USA, and online. She has translated into English some of Venezuela's best-known poets, including Rafael Cadenas, Eugenio Montejo, and Yolanda Pantin.

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