Nancy Morejón: Poetry Reading and Lecture
Nancy Morejón: Poetry Reading and Lecture
Cuban poet Nancy Morejón visits the campus to read her poetry and talk about her work.
She will also offer a workshop for area students at the Langley Park Community Center on October 25, and read her poetry on October 27 at Busboys and Poets, 5th and K Streets NW, Washington, DC.
Madre
Mi madre no tuvo jardín
sino islas acantiladas
flotando, bajo el sol,
en sus corales delicados.
No huba una rama limpia
en su pupila sino muchos garrotes.
Qué tiempo aquel cuando corría, descalza,
sobre la cal de los orfelinatos
y no sabía reir
y podía siquiera mirar el horizonte.
Ella no tuvo el aposento del marfil,
ni la sala de mimbre,
ni el vitral silencioso del trópico.
Mi madre tuvo el canto y el pañuelo
para acunar la fe de mis entrañas,
para alzar su cabeza de reina desoída
y dejarnos sus manos, como piedras preciosas, frente a los restos fríos de enemigo.
Mother
My mother
had no patio garden
but rocky islands
floating in delicate corals
under the sun.
Her eyes mirrored no clear-edged branch
but countless garrottes.
What days, those days when she ran barefoot
over the whitewash of orphanages,
and didn't laugh
or even see the horizon.
She had no ivory-inlaid bedroom,
no drawing room with wicker chairs,
and none of that hushed tropical stained-glass. My mother had the handkerchief and the song
to cradle my body's deepest faith,
and hold her head high,
banished queen—
She gave us her hands, like precious stones,
before the cold remains of the enemy.
trans. Heather Rosario Sievert
Looking Within: Selected Poems/Mirar Adentro: Poemas Escogidos, 1954-2000 (Wayne State University Press, 2003)
Born in 1944 in Havana to a militant dock-worker and a trade-unionist seamstress, Morejón graduated from Havana University, where she majored in French. She has written that her father's African heritage and her mother's Chinese and European ancestry gave her an early appreciation of blended dual identity and transculturation, though her prime identity is as an Afro-Caribbean woman. She is a well-regarded translator of French and English into Spanish, and she has been an editor for the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba. Morejón is a recipient, among many other prestigious national and international literary prizes, of the Critic's Prize (1986) and Cuba's National Prize for Literature (2001), the Golden Wreath (Macedonia, 2006), and Rafael Alberti Literary Prize (Spain 2007). Currently, she is the President of the Association of Writers of UNEAC (Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas Cubanos).
Sponsored by the Center for Literary & Comparative Studies, Departments of English, History, and Spanish & Portuguese, and the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Maryland; Busboys & Poets; Maryland-National Capital Park & Planning Commission; and the Smithsonian Institution.
Cuban poet Nancy Morejón visits the campus to read her poetry and talk about her work.
She will also offer a workshop for area students at the Langley Park Community Center on October 25, and read her poetry on October 27 at Busboys and Poets, 5th and K Streets NW, Washington, DC.
Madre
Mi madre no tuvo jardín
sino islas acantiladas
flotando, bajo el sol,
en sus corales delicados.
No huba una rama limpia
en su pupila sino muchos garrotes.
Qué tiempo aquel cuando corría, descalza,
sobre la cal de los orfelinatos
y no sabía reir
y podía siquiera mirar el horizonte.
Ella no tuvo el aposento del marfil,
ni la sala de mimbre,
ni el vitral silencioso del trópico.
Mi madre tuvo el canto y el pañuelo
para acunar la fe de mis entrañas,
para alzar su cabeza de reina desoída
y dejarnos sus manos, como piedras preciosas, frente a los restos fríos de enemigo.
Mother
My mother
had no patio garden
but rocky islands
floating in delicate corals
under the sun.
Her eyes mirrored no clear-edged branch
but countless garrottes.
What days, those days when she ran barefoot
over the whitewash of orphanages,
and didn't laugh
or even see the horizon.
She had no ivory-inlaid bedroom,
no drawing room with wicker chairs,
and none of that hushed tropical stained-glass. My mother had the handkerchief and the song
to cradle my body's deepest faith,
and hold her head high,
banished queen—
She gave us her hands, like precious stones,
before the cold remains of the enemy.
trans. Heather Rosario Sievert
Looking Within: Selected Poems/Mirar Adentro: Poemas Escogidos, 1954-2000 (Wayne State University Press, 2003)
Born in 1944 in Havana to a militant dock-worker and a trade-unionist seamstress, Morejón graduated from Havana University, where she majored in French. She has written that her father's African heritage and her mother's Chinese and European ancestry gave her an early appreciation of blended dual identity and transculturation, though her prime identity is as an Afro-Caribbean woman. She is a well-regarded translator of French and English into Spanish, and she has been an editor for the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba. Morejón is a recipient, among many other prestigious national and international literary prizes, of the Critic's Prize (1986) and Cuba's National Prize for Literature (2001), the Golden Wreath (Macedonia, 2006), and Rafael Alberti Literary Prize (Spain 2007). Currently, she is the President of the Association of Writers of UNEAC (Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas Cubanos).
Sponsored by the Center for Literary & Comparative Studies, Departments of English, History, and Spanish & Portuguese, and the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Maryland; Busboys & Poets; Maryland-National Capital Park & Planning Commission; and the Smithsonian Institution.
Tawes Hall