George McWhirter – författare

José Emilio Pacheco’s Selected Poems is a major bilingual retrospective of the poetry of one of Mexico’s foremost writers. Born in 1939, Pacheco achieved recognition early, and while still in his twenties, he was already keeping company with the most important writers of his generation. A prolific poet and perfectionist, Pacheco published many volumes of poetry, including his famous 1969 collection No me preguntes como pasa el tiempo (Don’t Ask Me How the Time Goes By). This edition is edited by George McWhirter of The University of British Columbia, who worked closely with Pacheco himself in choosing the poems and their English translations. Besides McWhirter’s own versions are those by Edward Dorn, Alastair Reid, Katherine Silver, and others. As McWhirter writes: “In his singularity of vision and multiplicity of poetic forms, traditional and modern, Pacheco spans past and present in both Latin American and peninsular Spanish poetry. It is a glittering and giant technical achievement, as brilliant and instantly visible as Hart Crane’s The Bridge.”

'Where Words Like Monarchs Fly' brings Mexican poetry to the fullness of its senses in English with all the music of the meaning, richness of metaphor and humour. It introduces Jose Emilio Pacheco, Gabriel Zaid, Homero Aridjis and Elsa Cross-born in the thirties and the forties-along with the fifties generation they have inspired. Covering twenty-five years of development and ten poets in full representation by each, this book is essential for understanding the immediacies of new Mexican verse. In translation by prize-winning Canadian poets Kate Braid, Sylvia Dorling, George McWhirter, Caroline Davis Goodwin, Karen Cooper, Arthur Lipman, Iona Whishaw and Raul Peschiera, the English versions have already attracted a wide readership in 'The New Republic', 'Modern Poetry in Translation', 'PRISM international', 'London Magazine' and others. "The original material shone through as fresh, biting analyses of the world that the poets live in. Some of hem followed me around for days..." - Broken Pencil