Overview

Born in the province of Leon in 1957, Juan Carlos Mestre has emerged as one of the outstanding Spanish poets of the last fifty years. In this ample selection from three of Mestre's highly acclaimed collections, poetry becomes an explosion of language that surprises, wildly inventive and subtly moving. There is a baroque expansiveness to Mestre's work, a delight in stretching language to encompass the widest range of experiences.           Behind the humour and playfulness lies a deep sense of life's tragedies, an implicit plea for compassion. Whether in the mix of filial tenderness and grief in 'Father' or in the humorous celebration of conjugal love in 'Argonauts', whether in a poem rich in political resonance like ""Ancestors"" or in a short poem about poetry like 'Tribe', Mestre knows how to touch the reader with a strangely unsettling clarity.           Bristling with a dadaist spirit of irreverence, Juan Carlos Mestre's poetry never goes in obvious directions. Instead Mestre reminds us that poetry is the unnameable emotion, the truth forever just beyond our reach so that in a definitive way, as the poem 'The Baker's Son' tells us, ""what is not said, is still said,"" and remains said.          With translations by acclaimed Australian poet and translator Peter Boyle, The Baker's Son offers the English-speaking reader a first, very generous sample of Mestre's finest work.

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9781837380244

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Juan Carlos Mestre (Villafranca del Bierzo, León, Spain, 1957), poet and graphic artist, is the author of numerous books of poetry and essays,including Antífona del Otoño en el Valle del Bierzo (Premio Adonáis, 1985), La poesía ha caído en desgracia (Premio Jaime Gil de Biedma, 1992) and La tumba de Keats (Premio Jaén de Poesía, 1999). In 1987 during a stay of several years in Chile he published Las páginas del fuego. His poetry has appeared in such anthologies as Historia Natural de la Felicidad (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2014) and La hora izquierda (Ya lo dijo Casimiro Parker, 2019). His book La casa roja received the National Poetry Prize in 2009, while his collection La bicicleta del panadero won the Critics' Prize in 2012. In 2018 he published Museo de la clase obrera, followed in 2019 by 200 gramos de patacas tristes, his first book written in the Galician language.In 2017 he was awarded the Premio de las Letras de Castilla y León in recognition for the body of his work, the Annual Cheng Ziáng Prize of the China Writers Association, and the ""Homero"" European Medal for Poetry and Art. His collected poems appeared in Spain in 2026. Peter Boyle is an award-winning Australian poet and translator of poetry. He has eleven books of poetry published and nine books as a translator of poetry from Spanish. His most recent collection is Companions, Ancestors, Inscriptions (Vagabond Press, 2024). His translations include Anima (Shearsman, 2011), Of Such a Nature / Indole (University of Alabama Press, 2018) and De últimas horas / Of Last Hours (Rialta Ediciones, 2023) by Cuban poet José Kozer and The Trees: Selected Poems of Eugenio Montejo (Salt Publishing, 2004). In 2013 he was awarded the New South Wales Premier's Award for Literary Translation. He holds a Doctorate of Creative Arts from the University of Western Sydney. Peter lives in Sydney, Australia.

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