Six Basque Poets - Arc Publications

Six Basque Poets - Arc Publications

Edited by: Mari Jose Olaziregi
Translated: by Amaia Gabantxo

Bernardo Atxaga, Rikardo Arregi, Felipe Juaristi, Miren Agur Meabe, Kirmen Uribe, Joseba Sarrionandia

Six Basque Poets is the second volume in a new series of bilingual anthologies which brings the work of contemporary poets from Europe and beyond to a wider English-language readership, a series which aims to keep a finger on the "here and now" of international contemporary poetry.

The six poets included in this collection have played a defining role in the development of Basque-language poetry in the last thirty years, since the arrival of what we have come to refer to as the "democratic age" in Spain and the Basque Country. They represent the diversity of voices and poetic schools that populate the contemporary Basque literary scene, where a variety of tendencies has emerged in the recent decades: a range of different poetics (poetics of experience, surrealist poetics, post-symbolist poetics, poetics of silence), use of various narrative styles, a preference for a non-aesthetic approach that dwells within the quotidian, an emergence of female voices that reclaim other codes and other universes, based on the female body. Like other genres, Basque poetry has absorbed the characteristics literary critics describe as post-modern: a denial of transcendental meaning, an assertion that all literature is metaliterature in the end, a non-elitist attitude towards literary creation, use of pastiche, mistrust of language and hybridization of genres.

Direct, moving and thought-provoking, poetry in the present volume gives us insight into the preoccupations of a literary milieu which may be marginalized by its use of an ancient language not spoken outside its territory but which is as powerful and original in its production as any of the literary centres in today's Europe.

New Poetry from Europe & Beyond Series
Series Editor: Alexandra Büchler
in cooperation with
Literature Across Frontiers
and supported by Culture
2000 and with support from
Department of Culture of the
Basque Government and the
Instituto Cervantes
Manchester

Authors' tours in August and October 2007

www.arcpublications.co.uk
www.lit-across-frontiers.org
http://manchester.cervantes.es

Best wishes,