Carmen Boullosa
Carmen Boullosa, born in Mexico City in 1954, is the author of seventeen collections of poetry and nineteen novels. Most recently, she published two novels, El libro de Eva / The Book of Eve (Alfaguara, 2020), and, in translation, The Book of Anna (Coffee House Press, 2020). She has also authored two books of essays, one of which was co-authored with Mike Wallace called A Narco History: How Mexico and the USA Jointly Created the "Mexican Drug War" (OR Press, 2015), and ten plays, seven of which were staged.
Boullosa is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Xavier Villaurrutia Award, the Jorge Ibargüengoitia Prize for Literature, the Anna Seghers Prize of Germany, and LiBeratur Prize, the Café Gijón Prize, a Rosalía de Castro Prize, and the Casa de América de Poesía Americana Prize. She also won five New York Emmy Awards for her show Nueva York, at CUNY TV, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has been a Cullman Center Fellow.
Since the 1970s, she has created and printed many books featuring her own artwork, frequently in collaboration with other artists. She has exhibited her work at the Museo de Arte Moderno and the Museo Carrillo Gil in Mexico City and the Macaulay Honors College Library in New York City, among other places.
She has been a visiting professor at Georgetown University, Columbia University, New York University, Blaise Pascal University (Clermont-Ferrand, France), and has taught at the City College of New York at CUNY. She now teaches at Macaulay Honors College at CUNY.
Introduction to the author,
and an English reading by Askold Melnyczuk:
Quo vadis?
How far have you fallen, sleepless Motherland,
as the star in the story,
as the drunk who crashes into the light pole.
Your mass, denser,
more austere, stronger,
more real,
can compress itself to fit inside a thimble,
or onto the border of that blouse.
Where you came from, there is no doubt.
But where are you going?
In the smoke of a war between everyone
in which no one
participates
except mercenaries.
—flying bullets have no allegiance,
they are on the federal payroll, or state, or this boss or the other etcetera…
Rapid-fire salaries—
you escape us, Mother in flight.
(Your breath
from honey
to machinegun bursts for hire.)
(Your breath of garlic and chocolate and diverse chiles.)
(Your breath toward the grinding stone,
molcajete and garlic and honey and chiles and pepper and cinnamon.)
Your breath toward the sacrificial stone,
to blood,
to the heart still beating alive.)
— Translation by Catherine Hammond
Carmen Boullosa reading her poem
“¿Quo vadis?” in the original Spanish:
¿Quo vadis?
¿Dónde caíste, Patria insomne,
como el astro del cuento,
como la ebria que se estrella contra un poste de luz?
Tu masa más densa,
más austera,
más sólida,
más real,
puede comprimirse y caber en un dedal,
o en el bordado de aquella blusa.
De que estés, no hay duda.
¿Pero a dónde vas?
Entre lo humos de una guerra entre todos,
en la que nadie
sino mercenarios
participa
-las balas que vuelan no tienen convicciones,
son de paga federal, estatal, o de este capo o el otro etcétera…
Ráfagas a sueldo-,
te nos escapas, Patria en fuga.
(Tu aliento
de miel
de ráfagas a sueldo.)
(Tu aliento de ajo y chocolate y chiles diversos.)
(Tu aliento a piedra de moler,
molcajete y ajo y miel y chiles y pimienta y canela.
(Tu aliento a piedra del sacrificio,
a sangre,
al corazón que aún palpita.)
— Carmen Boullosa