Claudia Magliano

Claudia Magliano is an Uruguayan poet, born in Montevideo in 1974. She attended the Instituto de Profesores Artigas (Artigas Teachers’ Institute of Uruguay), and currently works as a Professor of Literature.

She has received awards for her poetry for the past twenty years. In 2005, her first collection of poems Nada (Nothing) received awards for the Poetry Contest of the Association of Bankers (AEBU) and La Casa de los Escritores del Uruguay (The House of Writers of Uruguay). Her second book Res was published by Ático Ediciones in December 2010 and won the first-place prize for published poetry from the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC). Originally published in 2023, a bilingual edition of Magliano’s El corazón de las ciruelas (The heart of plums) was published in 2024.

Her poems have appeared in Uruguayan and Latin American poetry anthologies, as well as virtual publications.

Beef 41

At night the river is just a thin trail of water/ the dead cannot be seen at night/ no/ it is so
dark in the pasture the night is a black hood a shawl that does not let in the light/ the
bottom of the well the water at the bottom of the well/ far from the river we are happy/ in
the morning we will not see the dead their arms the mill grinding the air/ no. Life starts
right at your doorstep.

    — Translation by Jesse Lee Kercheval and Ruth Llana

Claudia Magliano reading her poem
“Res 41” in the original Spanish:

Res 41

En la noche el río es solo un poco de agua/ los muertos no se ven en la noche/ no/ es
tan oscura en el campo la noche es un capuz negro un manto que no filtra la luz/ el
fondo del aljibe el agua del aljibe en el fondo/ lejos del río somos felices/ por la mañana
no se verán los muertos sus brazos el molino triturando el aire/ no. La vida empieza
justo en la puerta de tu casa.

    — Claudia Magliano