Friday Night Poetry Corner #276–Excilia Saldaña

Good evening and welcome to another Poetry Corner.

This week I am featuring a famous poet whose works is undeniably remarkable. The feature poems are only in Spanish but if you can translate, I am sure you won’t regret it.

Below is a brief bio about Excilia Saldaña and after that pictures of her work. Enjoy!

Afro-Cuban juvenile literature writer, poet and academic, noted for her experimental forms which straddled the boundary between prose and poetry, blending in myth, folklore and meticulously studied cultural traditions.

In 1984, she won the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba Special Prize La Rosa Blanca given for the best children’s literature of the year for the first time and repeated that award four other times in her career. In 1995, she was a finalist in the International José Martí Prize for children’s Literature awarded by the Costa Rican Ministry of Culture and the San Judas Tadeo Foundation. Three years later, her poetry garnered her the Nicolás Guilén Award. 

Saldaña died on 20 July 1999, aged 52, in Havana from complications of asthma.

https://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Salda%C3%B1a,_Excilia