Cecilia Vicuña, a poet, activist, and visual/performance artist, presents her collection New and Selected Poems, spanning over fifty years from 1966 to the present day. Rosa Alcalá, along with eight other translators, contributes to this collection of Vicuña’s work, showcasing her evolution over the years. Vicuña acknowledges Alcalá’s significant role in her poetic journey.
Daniel Borzutzky, a National Book Award-winning Latinx poet, introduces Vicuña, highlighting her place in a transnational literary avant-garde. Vicuña, who hails from Chile, has lived in various countries, including the US, where she has been in exile for over three decades.
The book not only features Vicuña’s poems but also includes her photos, art installations, drawings, and performance notes. The poems are presented in Spanish alongside English translations, occasionally incorporating Spanglish and indigenous South American languages, reflecting Vicuña’s creative diversity.
Vicuña’s focus on indigenous history is evident in her work, such as in her book QUIPOem/The Precarious, paying homage to the Andean indigenous people who used quipus for recording. These poems explore weaving and quipus, symbolizing intricate connections and histories.
The collection features poems with unique shapes akin to concrete poetry, blending content and form to evoke forgotten histories. Vicuña’s work celebrates her advocacy for indigenous and migrant rights, environmentalism, and socialism, transcending traditional boundaries.
Recovered writings from the late ’60s add depth to the collection, emphasizing that a poem for Vicuña is more than words on a page; it embodies the poet’s spirit and life. Her poems delve into intimate and spiritual realms, exemplified in her reflective lines.
The New and Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña showcases the multifaceted voice of a contemporary poetic powerhouse, emphasizing communal living and art-making over solitary creation for posterity.
