Invisible Dog
Published on 28. November 2024
144 pages
978-1-80017-452-8 (ISBN)
Description
A Telegraph Book of the Year 2024
Fabio Morabito is one of Mexico's best loved and most entertaining contemporary writers, his narratives marked by a humane irony and a philosophical resignation to the vagaries of his society and the irresistible tyrannies of time. Some of his poems make the reader laugh out loud, and Richard Gwyn's translations are true to the tone and manner of the originals. This is the first collection of his poems to appear in English, putting right a significant omission.
The fifty-four poems in Invisible Dog were selected by the poet and translator in collaboration and draw from his five published collections spread over four decades. Readers enjoy a comprehensive introduction to his work in breadth and depth. His formal and thematic developments illuminate the wider context of modern Latin American writing, its inventive playfulness, its evasion of conventions of 'national culture'.
Morabito was born to Italian parents in Alexandria in 1955 and has lived in Mexico City since the age of fifteen. His position as a poet writing in a second language contributes to his unique voice and vision. It is possible in these versions to detect elements of the poet's 'foreignness' in his straightforward lexical choices, which have the effect of making the poems somehow vulnerable, as in 'Journey to Patzcuaro', a sort of allegory for the immigrant experience.
Fabio Morabito is one of Mexico's best loved and most entertaining contemporary writers, his narratives marked by a humane irony and a philosophical resignation to the vagaries of his society and the irresistible tyrannies of time. Some of his poems make the reader laugh out loud, and Richard Gwyn's translations are true to the tone and manner of the originals. This is the first collection of his poems to appear in English, putting right a significant omission.
The fifty-four poems in Invisible Dog were selected by the poet and translator in collaboration and draw from his five published collections spread over four decades. Readers enjoy a comprehensive introduction to his work in breadth and depth. His formal and thematic developments illuminate the wider context of modern Latin American writing, its inventive playfulness, its evasion of conventions of 'national culture'.
Morabito was born to Italian parents in Alexandria in 1955 and has lived in Mexico City since the age of fifteen. His position as a poet writing in a second language contributes to his unique voice and vision. It is possible in these versions to detect elements of the poet's 'foreignness' in his straightforward lexical choices, which have the effect of making the poems somehow vulnerable, as in 'Journey to Patzcuaro', a sort of allegory for the immigrant experience.
Reviews / Votes
'Lucidly translated ...The book is filled with unforgettable poems addressing themes of masculinity, philosophy and the relentless passage of time, often with dark humour and irony, both well-known qualities of Morabito's oeuvre ... A stunning collection.'Leo Boix, Morning Star 'Perhaps the term "co-author" might be more accurate than translator to describe Gwyn's accomplishment -- a term which carries inherent within it a connotation of something derivative of the original, but not quite the real thing. Not so here. The spirit of fidelity to the original poems is retained throughout, and while Gywn avoids taking unnecessary risks or liberties (these poems fall somewhere between translations and versions), in the process of faithfully and accurately transporting the original cargo intact across the bridge between the two languages, he creates poetry of his own: the benchmark for a work of literary translation.'
Colin Carberry, The High Window 'Invisible Dog is a big-hearted collection: suffused with exile and affection, funny and serious, wise and hopeful. These poems have been exposed to all the heat and light of a life, and now they offer a resolving simplicity, a gorgeous record of all that heat and light and happiness and loss. Richard Gwyn's translations capture Morabito's warmth of tone, the plain language with which he disentangles complex ideas, and the candour that should win him many readers in this language.'
Ailbhe Darcy 'Invisible Dog deals in vacated and reinhabited spaces: houses and parts of houses, languages, cities, the body, sites of danger or anticipation. In this, Morabito has found a companionable translator in Richard Gwyn - a writer who understands the logic of trespass, and the ambivalences and vexations of the homes we make for ourselves.'
Abigail Parry
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Carcanet Press Ltd
File size
1,06 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-80017-452-8 (9781800174528)
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Persons
Fabio Morabito was born to Italian parents in Alexandria in 1955 and has lived in Mexico City since the age of fifteen. He has published five collections of poetry, including De lunes todo el ano, which won the Aguascalientes National Prize for Poetry in 1991 and Lotes baldios, which was awarded the 1995 Carlos Pellicer prize. His poetry and short stories have established him as one of Mexico's best-known writers over the past 30 years. He has compiled and retold a book of 125 oral Mexican short stories, Cuentos populares mexicanos (2014), which won the 'White Raven Prize' in 2015. His novel El lector a domicilio (2018) was awarded the Xavier Villaurrutia Award. He is also a prolific translator from Italian, and his own books have been widely translated. Richard Gwyn grew up in south Wales, and lived for many years in Greece and Spain. His travels in Latin America form the subject of a chronicle, Ambassador of Nowhere (2024). He is the author of four collections of poetry and three novels, and his memoir, The Vagabond's Breakfast, won Wales Book of the Year for nonfiction in 2012. He has translated poetry and short fiction by many Latin American writers. The Other Tiger, a major dual-text anthology of contemporary Latin American poetry, containing work by nearly 100 poets, was published by Seren in 2016. His translations of the poetry of Dario Jaramillo, Impossible Loves (Carcanet), was shortlisted for the Premio Valle-Inclan in 2020. His alter ego writes about literary and everyday matters on Ricardo Blanco's Blog.
