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Invisible Dog

Fabio Morábito

Translated by Richard Gwyn

Cover of Invisible Dog by Fabio Morábito
10% off
Categories: 20th Century, 21st Century, Dual Language, Italian, Mexican, Spanish and Catalan, Translation
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (144 pages)
(Due Nov 2024)
9781800174511
£12.99 £11.69
  • Description
  • Author
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • Fabio Morábito is one of Mexico's best loved and most entertaining contemporary writers, his narratives marked by a humane irony and a philosophical resignation to the vagaries of his society and the irresistible tyrannies of time. Some of his poems make the reader laugh out loud, and Richard Gwyn's translations are true to the tone and manner of the originals. This is the first collection of his poems to appear in English, putting right a significant omission.

    The fifty-four poems in Invisible Dog were selected by the poet and translator in collaboration and draw from his five published collections spread over four decades. Readers enjoy a comprehensive introduction to his work in breadth and depth. His formal and thematic developments illuminate the wider context of modern Latin American writing, its inventive playfulness, its evasion of conventions of 'national culture'.

    Morábito was born to Italian parents in Alexandria in 1955 and has lived in Mexico City since the age of fifteen. His position as a poet writing in a second language contributes to his unique voice and vision. It is possible in these versions to detect elements of the poet's 'foreignness' in his straightforward lexical choices, which have the effect of making the poems somehow vulnerable, as in 'Journey to Pátzcuaro', a sort of allegory for the immigrant experience.
    Fabio Morábito
    Fabio Morábito was born to Italian parents in Alexandria in 1955 and has lived in Mexico City since the age of fifteen. He has published five collections of poetry, including De lunes todo el año, which won the Aguascalientes National Prize for Poetry in 1991 and Lotes baldíos, which ... read more
    Richard Gwyn
    Richard Gwyn grew up in south Wales, and lived for many years in Greece and Spain. His travels in Latin America form the subject of a chronicle, Ambassador of Nowhere (2024). He is the author of four collections of poetry and three novels, and his memoir, The Vagabond’s Breakfast, won ... read more
    Awards won by Richard Gwyn Short-listed, 2020 The Premio Valle Inclán Award for Spanish Translation (Impossible Loves)
    'Invisible Dog is a big-hearted collection: suffused with exile and affection, funny and serious, wise and hopeful. These poems have been exposed to all the heat and light of a life, and now they offer a resolving simplicity, a gorgeous record of all that heat and light and happiness and loss. Richard Gwyn's translations capture Morábito's warmth of tone, the plain language with which he disentangles complex ideas, and the candour that should win him many readers in this language.'
    Ailbhe Darcy
    'Invisible Dog deals in vacated and reinhabited spaces: houses and parts of houses, languages, cities, the body, sites of danger or anticipation. In this, Morábito has found a companionable translator in Richard Gwyn – a writer who understands the logic of trespass, and the ambivalences and vexations of the homes we make for ourselves.'
    Abigail Parry
    Praise for Richard Gwyn 'This dual language collection, full of witticisms and lyrical meditations on everyday life, showcases one of the greatest living poets from Latin America... Gwyn's selection, from a poet who's career spans five decades, shows Jaramillo at the height of his powers.'

    Leo Boix, The Poetry Review


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