Wonder-Makers

A group of six women from Spanish-speaking countries, including two Chileans, have just published Wonder-Makers: Navigators of the Thames, a bilingual volume of poems whose themes deal with exile, migration, loss and memory. The book was printed in Chile and launched this month at London’s Instituto Cervantes, and will be followed by a collection of the same authors’ short fiction later this year. Here’s a link to a video of the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBwOE6thlP4 and an excerpt:

Houses

I built a stone house

“Nobody will destroy it,” I thought.

Water took it away,

Now it’s in the bottom of the ocean.

Neptune inhabits it.

 

I lived in a shanty dwelling of crystal

“Nobody will steal it,“ I thought.

One morning on waking up

I was alone under the sky

The government had seized it.

They made it into a national monument.

 

I came up with a mansion of straw.

“Nobody will take it away,” I thought.

But my neighbour’s cows

ate it one afternoon.

 

Now I live with the sky and the sea.

I know that no one can occupy my dreams.

—Marijo Alba-Sanchez