Lila Zemborain's poetry collection translated from Spanish by the acclaimed poet and translator Rosa Alcalá. This collection power subverts paper: her words turn pages into films of blurred or incomplete images. The references are specific, but what is happening remains stubbornly a question defying the definitive answer except for what a reader is moved to speculate. Zemborain brings into relationship the viscera of the body and the spill of the universe in tense compositions that blur distinctions between lyric and prose poetry, between science and eros.
Lila Zemborain is an Argentine poet and critic who has lived in New York City since 1985. She is the author of the poetry collections Abrete sésamo debajo del agua (1993), Usted (1998), Guardianes del secreto (2002), Malvas orquídeas del mar (2004; published as Mauve Sea-Orchids [2007]), Rasgado (2006), and the chapbooks Ardores (1989), and Pampa (2001). Her work has been included in the anthologies Mujeres mirando al sur. Poetas sudamericanas en USA (2004) and Final de entrega. Antologíade poetás contra la violencia de género (2006).
Zemborain's poems, translated by Rosa Alcalá and Mónica de la Torre, have also appeared in several English-language anthologies, including The Light of the City and Sea. An Anthology of Suffolk County Poetry (2006), and Corresponding Voices (2002); in the art catalogues Alessandro Twombly (2007) and Heidi McFall (2005); and in publications such as Ecopoetics, Rattapallas, The Brooklyn Rail, A Gathering of the Tribes, The Poetry Project Newsletter, and Mandorla. In addition, she has authored the book-length essay Gabriela Mistral. Una mujer sin rostro (2002).
Lila Zemborain is the director and editor of the Rebel Road series, and the curator of the KJCC Poetry Series at New York University, where she teaches creative writing in Spanish.
An award-winning poet and translator, Rosa Alcalá has published several books of her own poems as well as translations of poetry by Latin American writers. YOU, her fourth poetry collection, was published by Coffee House Press in 2024. She has received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant to Artists Award, a Woodberry Poetry Room Creative Fellowship from Harvard, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Translation. Her book Spit Temple: The Selected Performances of Cecilia Vicuña was runner-up for the PEN Translation Award. Her poems and translations are featured in publications such as Harper's, The Nation, American Poetry Review, Poetry, and two volumes of The Best American Poetry. Critical essays on her work appear in American Poets in the 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement; The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of our Time; and The Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them. Recently she served as a Guest Editor for the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series and is currently a Consulting Editor for the University of Chicago Press' Phoenix Poets Series. She holds the DeWetter Endowed Chair in Poetry at the University of Texas at El Paso's Department of Creative Writing and Bilingual MFA Program.
