A book of cosmological surrealism in the tradition of Octavio Paz,
Solar Poems is the first English translation of a single volume of
poems by Mexico's famed poet-diplomat Homero Aridjis, exploring
political consciousness as well as visionary psychological themes.
President emeritus of International PEN, the prolific poet is Mexico's
ambassador to UNESCO. Poemas solares (Solar Poems) was published in
2005.
Translator George McWhirter won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for
Catalan Poems, the F.R. Scott Prize for Selected Poems of José Emilio
Pacheco, and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for his novel Cage. He is
Vancouver's first Poet Laureate.
Homero Aridjis is a profoundly ecological poet who has put his fame and
time where his principles are, fighting to save the monarch butterflies
that winter by the billions in the mountains of his native Michoacán,
the sea turtle that lays her eggs on Caribbean beaches, and the gray
whale that calves in the lagoons of Baja California. Aridjis writes to
the point, with an open eye and a sense of humor . . . --John Oliver
Simon, Poetry Flash