Humberto Ak'abal – författare

“My language was born among trees,it holds the taste of earth;my ancestors’ tongue is my home.”—from “The Old Song of the Blood”A legacy of land and language courses through the pages of this spirited bilingual edition, offering an expansive take on the internationally renowned work of Humberto Ak’abal, a K’iche’ Maya poet born in the western highlands of Guatemala.Featuring both Ak’abal’s Spanish translations from the indigenous K’iche’ and English translations by acclaimed poet Michael Bazzett, this collection blossoms from the landscape of Momostenango—mountains covered in cloud forest, deep ravines, terraced fields of maize. Ak’abal’s unpretentious verse models a contraconquista—counter-conquest—perspective, one that resists the impulse to impose meaning on the world and encourages us to receive it instead. “In church,” he writes, “the only prayer you hear / comes from the trees / they turned into pews.” Every living thing has its song, these poems suggest. We need only listen for it.Attuned, uncompromising, Ak’abal teaches readers to recognize grace in every earthly observation—in the wind, carrying a forgotten name. In the roots, whose floral messengers “tell us / what earth is like / on the inside.” Even in the birds, who “sing in mid-flight / and shit while flying.” At turns playful and pointed, this prescient entry in the Seedbank series is a transcendent celebration of both K’iche’ indigeneity and Ak’abal’s lifetime of work.

A collection of poetry by one of the greatest Indigenous poets of the Americas about the vanished world of his childhood — that of the Maya K’iche’.Aquí era el paraíso / Here Was Paradise is a selection of poems written by the great Maya poet Humberto Ak’abal. They evoke his childhood in and around the Maya K’iche’ village of Momostenango, Guatemala, and also describe his own role as a poet of the place.Ak’abal writes about children, and grandfathers, and mothers, and animals, and ghosts, and thwarted love, and fields, and rains, and poetry, and poverty, and death.The poetry was written for adults but can also be read and loved by young people, especially in this collection, beautifully illustrated by award-winning Guatemalan-American illustrator Amelia Lau Carling.Ak’abal is famous worldwide as one of the great contemporary poets in the Spanish language, and one of the greatest Indigenous poets of the Americas. Ak’abal first composed his poems in K’iche’ in his mind before writing them down in Spanish. Key Text Featuresforewordbiographical informationpoemstranslation Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.2Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.4Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative language such as metaphors and similes.CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.5Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem.CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.7Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem).CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.2Determine a theme or central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.5Analyze how a particular sentence, chapter, scene, or stanza fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the theme, setting, or plot.

En palabras de su amigo, el poeta y editor Francisco José Cruz: "Es un conjunto de textos autobiográficos, tan estremecedores como reconfortantes… A veces pareciera dirigirse a quienes no pertenecemos a su etnia para enseñarnos aspectos espirituales o lingüísticos de ella; y, en otras, parece insistir a los suyos en la necesidad de cultivarse con el fin de salir de la marginación en que muchos aún se hayan confinados, recuperando, a la par, el conocimiento de sus tradiciones autóctonas, pues "no se puede ser nadie todo el tiempo".Los ensayos y poemas de esta obra inducen a la introspección y a los recuerdos, su lectura puede ayudar a tanto joven a no desmayar ante las dificultades, a vislumbrar otros caminos, a perseverar en ellos. Es una lectura para todos, para quienes no han leído todavía al autor y para los estudiosos de su obra. De los poemas y ensayos, hay inéditos de gran importancia para la comprensión a fondo de la trayectoria humana y literaria del poeta y otros ya publicados en periódicos y revistas de ambos lados del Atlántico.