Rossella Di Paolo

Rossella Di Paolo was born in Lima, Peru in 1960. She studied literature at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. She made her first publications in the student literary magazine Calandria, and worked as a journalist for several years for the alternative current affairs magazine La Tortuga. Her books include Prueba de Galera (1985 and 2017), Continuidad de Los Cuadros (1988 and 2018), Raised skin (1993 and 2019), Tablets of San Lázaro (2001 and 2020), and The chair in the sea (2016), which received the Lights of the Readers Award for the El Comercio Best Book of Poetry of 2016. In 2020, she won the Casa de la Literatura Peruana Prize and was distinguished as a Personalidad Meritoria de la Cultura (Admirable Cultural Personality) by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture.

She is a university professor and directs poetry workshops. Her poems have appeared in anthologies of Peruvian and Latin American poetry. She takes part in exhibitions of poetry, painting, and photography, and edits multidisciplinary editions of poetry.
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Leave if You Can II

I live in the house of poetry. 
I ascend her stairs slowly 
and leap back down. 
I sit in the chair of poetry, 
sleep in her bed, eat from her plate. 
Poetry has windows 
through which mornings and afternoons 
fall, and how well she suspends a teardrop
how well she blows until I tumble / With this 
I mean to say that 
one basket brings 
both wounds and bandages.  
I love poetry so much that sometimes I think 
I don’t love her / She looks at me, 
inclines her head and keeps knitting 
poetry. 
As always, I’ll be the bigger person. 
But how to say it / How to tell her
I want to leave / honestly I want to 
fry my asparagus…
I see her coming near 
with her bottle of oil 
and crazed skillet. 
I see her, 
her little bundle of asparagus 
slipping out her sleeve. 
Ah her freshness / her chaotic glint
and the way she approaches with relentless meter.  
I surrender / I surrender always because I live 
in the house of poetry / because I ascend 
the stairs of poetry 
and also because 
I come back down.

    — Translated by Lisa Allen Ortiz & Sara Daniele Rivera

Sal si puedes II

Vivo en la casa de la poesía.
Subo despacio sus escaleras
y también, saltando, las bajo.
Me siento en la silla de la poesía,
duermo en su cama, como en su plato.
La poesía tiene ventanas
por donde se deja caer
mañanas y tardes,
y bien me cuelga una lágrima
bien sopla hasta tumbarla / Con esto
quiero decir que trae
curitas y heridas
en la misma canasta.
Yo quiero tanto a la poesía que a veces creo
que no la quiero /Ella me mira,
mueve la cabeza y sigue tejiendo
poesía.
Como siempre, me quedará grande.
Pero cómo decirle / cómo decirle
Quiero salir / quiero freír
Honestamente mis espárragos...
Ya la veo alcanzándome
con su botella de aceite
y su loco sartén.
Ya la veo,
con su atadito de espárragos
saliéndole de la manga.
Ah su frescura / su fulgor desordenado
y el demorado compás con que me cerca.
Y yo me rindo / me rindo siempre porque vivo
en la casa de la poesía / porque subo
las escaleras de la poesía
y porque también las bajo.

    — Rosella Di Paolo