Overview

The poetry of José Javier Villarreal is a departure, a seeing through hearing, a constant musical play of rhythms and images. The lyrical narrative of North Sea is music for the image, emphasizing the importance of poetry being read aloud and reinforcing the crucial experience of hearing and the elements involved in such a process: cadences, sounds, rhythms, and stress.

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9781969317125

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Reviews

José Javier Villarreal belongs to the generation of Mexican poets who transformed national poetry in the 1980s. With North Sea-winner of the Premio Nacional de Poesía Aguascalientes in 1987-he created a book where the North of Mexico becomes a stage for myth, memory, and the restless movement of the sea. At once musical and expansive, these poems open a path from the regional to the universal. Scott Bennett's translation invites new readers into a collection that remains a touchstone of modern Mexican literature. Danny Anderson

Author Information

José Javier Villarreal is a Mexican poet born in 1959 in Tecate. He is the author of Mar del Norte (1988), Portuaria (1997), Bíblica (1998), La Santa (2007), Campo Alaska (2012), Una señal del cielo (2017), Los secretos engarces (2021), and Retratos de familia (2025), among others. He is also a translator and essayist. Awards he has received include the Premio Nacional de Poesía Aguascalientes, the Premio Nacional de Poesía Alfonso Reyes, the Premio a las Artes UANL, and the World Cultural Council Award. His work has been trans lated into French, Portuguese, and Italian. Since 2020, he has directed the international poetry series El oro de los tigres. Scott Bennett holds a PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is a university professor, literary translator, and photographer. He has published articles on Mexican literature and visual culture, and has translations of poets such as José Javier Villarreal, Víctor Soto Ferrel, and Carlos Adolfo Gutiérrez Vidal (among others) in Across the Line / Al otro lado: The Poetry of Baja California (Junction Press, 2002). He has exhibited potos internationally, and had a photo included in the International Center of Photography exhibit (and book publication) titled #ICPConcerned: Global Images for Global Crisis.

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