342 pages / 6.00 x 9.00 inches / no illustrations
Literary Collections / Caribbean & Latin American | Poetry / Anthologies (Multiple Authors) | Poetry / Caribbean & Latin American
A Scar Where Goodbyes Are Written is a bilingual anthology of poetry written by fifteen Venezuelan poets who are currently residing in Chile. Edited and translated by David M. Brunson, the volume encompasses the work of young poets coming from many different circumstances. Some have already published several books, while others have just begun their careers as writers. The vast majority of the original Spanish texts appeared in books, anthologies, and magazines across Chile, Venezuela, and elsewhere in the Hispanosphere.
In recent years, more than six million people have fled Venezuela in one of the world’s largest mass migrations, stemming in part from an ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by the country’s backsliding into authoritarianism, brutal political repression, corruption, food and medical shortages, violent crime, hyperinflation, and the mismanagement of Venezuela’s natural and financial resources, first by Hugo Chávez and presently by Nicolás Maduro.
Begun during Brunson’s travels in Chile amid the 2019–2020 protest movement, this dual-language collection aims to elevate the individual voices of each migrant poet, to connect them with new readers, and to enrich the body of literature available in English.
David M. Brunson’s poems and translations have appeared in Asymptote, Copper Nickel, Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, Booth, and elsewhere. The recipient of a Sturgis International Fellowship and a Lily Peter Fellowship in Translation, Brunson teaches English in Santiago, Chile.
“The poets in A Scar Where Goodbyes Are Written teach us hard and necessary lessons about the nature of displacement, engaging the reader in this most twenty-first century of lives. These are poems that break the heart open—but also make the world ring with their truths.”—Jesse Lee Kercheval, editor of América invertida: An Anthology of Emerging Uruguayan Poets
“A unique compilation of fifteen voices that shed light on and challenge the non-human aspect of statistics that quantify the tragedy of contemporary Venezuelans living abroad. In these poems, each author is a witness that must confront their own truths to reclaim the homeland they remember and to examine the in-between spaces that separate their native land from their adoptive one.”—Leonora Simonovis, author of Study of the Raft
“In poem after poem of this timely anthology, we find the personal meeting the political, shaped by place and by the forces of history. David M. Brunson’s generous editorial vision and his poetically inspired translations bring us art that is as urgent as the news.”—Geoffrey Brock, translator of Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Allegria, winner of the National Translation Award in Poetry
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