Piedad Bonnett

Piedad Bonnett was born in Antioquia, Colombia in 1951. She is a poet, playwright, and novelist, and has published eight books of poetry. She obtained a degree in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Los Andes, where she later taught as a professor in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities department until 2010. Her poetry granted her an honorable mention in the Spanish-American Poetry Competition (the Paz Prize) honoring Octavio Paz, the National Poetry Award from the Colombian Institute of Culture in 1994, the Casa de América award for American poetry in 2011, the Poetas del Mundo Latino award honoring Víctor Sandoval “for the contribution of her work to the Spanish language,” and the Honorary Poetry Award of Casa de las Américas in 2014. In 2016, Bonnett was recognized with The Generation of 27 Award for her book Los habitados (The inhabited). Her poems have been translated into French, English, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, and Swedish. Bonnett is currently a columnist for El Espectador (The Spectator), a newspaper with national circulation in Colombia, and published her most recent novel, Lo que no tiene nombre (What has no name), which describes her experience with her son’s suicide, in 2013. She lives in Bogotá, Colombia.

Kitchen

A kitchen can be the world,
a desert, a weeping-place.

There we were: two mothers conversing in hushed voices
as if children slept in the chambers. 

But nobody was. Only the reverberation of the silence
where music had once scaled the walls.

We sought words. We sipped tea
gazing into the bitter well of the past,

two mothers on a bridge that unites them
holding onto the emptiness with their hands.

    — Translation by Arturo Desimone

Cocina

Una cocina puede ser el mundo,
un desierto, un lugar para llorar.

Estábamos ahí dos madres conversando en voz muy baja
como si hubiera niños durmiendo en las alcobas.

Pero no había nadie. Sólo la resonancia del silencio
donde alguna vez hubo música trepando las paredes.

Buscábamos palabras. Bebíamos el té
mirando el pozo amargo del pasado,

dos madres sobre el puente que las une
sosteniendo el vacío con sus manos.

    — Piedad Bonnett