is a bilingual poetry anthology (English and Spanish) by the Hispano-American Women Writers on Memory. They started as a literary group of women from Latin America and Spain in 2010 and with their performative and artistic work have gained a legitimate space in the literary world of the UK. In their performances they use multimedia to make their bilingual presentations more accessible. Together they develop and share their craft facilitating writing workshops and establishing links with other socio-literary communities.
This book, and its twin of short stories, are the result of a joint effort and dedication of five years. The work is woven into several themes which arose through their collaborative work: (Un)Fractures, Furies, Wonder-Makers, Seafarers, Otherhood, Selfies and Links. Their work stems and develops from their own experiences as exiled and migrant women. Thus, their focus is to create inclusion and social justice. They celebrate and creatively boost the defence of human and planetary rights through their visual, oral, autobiographical, poetic and narrative art. Both books include works by Marijo Alba-Sánchez, Marie Eugenia Bravo-Calderara, Sofía Buchuck-Gill, Mabel Encinas-Sánchez, Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes and Isabel Ros-López. They were published by Escaparate, Chile, and can be obtained by contacting Mabel.Encinas@gmail.com
The following two poem are from the Wonder-Makers section of the anthology.
Wonder-makers we are
By Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes
Translated by Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes
Travellers of the world,
imagined and real, we are.
We don’t care for fatherlands or patriarchs,
all those women who feel and live like us
inhabit the Motherland we create.
We are deep thinkers, in love with life,
Strong as oak, soft and fresh as a morning breeze in autumn,
creative goddesses, we are.
Furious and generous as Pachamama
passionate fighters,
Cuzqueñas and Peruvian Indians,
warriors and witches,
we are.
Mapuche Chileans, ancient and wise,
Aztec and Mexican, crazy and wonderful,
rebellious Spanish witches,
chasing chimeras and utopias.
Creators of our final destiny,
we turn the word to song,
we sing in colour or in red and black,
we draw on paper and in our bodies
we paint on walls and mountains,
we dance in Castilian and Spanish,
we remember in Quechua and Mapudungun,
we laugh in Nahuatl and Zapotec,
we protest in Euskera and Galician,
we murmur in English.
We memory since immemorial times,
language and des-language, we are.
Waves of women, we are,
planetary, Terran and terrestrial,
poets and prehistoric painters,
medieval and modern,
writers and singers of the peoples and for the people.
Wonder-makers we are …
The wonder-maker
by: María Eugenia Bravo-Calderara
Trans. Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes
(For my grandmother Maria)
The wonder-maker is made of fingers
of sun and arms of moon.
She travels through the heavens atop the clouds
whilst the air murmurs in her ear secret words
made of wind.
The wonder-maker was born from the blue light of
a distant star
and her eyes guess the charmed colours of
buried and distant worlds.
She loves life, and thus on sacred altars she places
her loves enshrined.
The wonder-maker knows the secret languages
of water and air, of fire and earth;
she has the wisdom of the ancients and knows
the tongue of flowers
and she has travelled countless times
to the heart of colours.
Blue fairy, she sleeps beneath the light of her star
to awaken covered with pearls
of translucent dew.
The wonder-maker weaves the greenest reeds next to
the river of time
and smiles to life.
And if destinies become tangled, she disentangles them
with her invincible swords and the powerful magic
of her spells surrounded by flames.
And so, the wonder-maker does not fear the darkness
of the night,
for she can be, if needed, a threat to the shadows.
The wonder- maker sings, and her song grows like
a seed of peace within time,
and she is thus the life of infinite light.
The wonder-maker was made by the rhythm of the most
beautiful beauty
to shell the secret of life;
the wonder-maker thus holds such delighted wonder,
afterglow of blood-red sunsets
and is keeper of the sweltering serenities of the dawn.
And thus from her lips flows the song of glorious dawns,
of golden suns and ripe sheaves,
and her tireless hands knit the golden green foliage
rustling.
Her heart beats the roar of distant waves
and the storms of green seas.
The wonder-maker sleeps hugged to the flow of the spell.
and her voice sings all songs;
universal Goddess of beauty,
she is the guardian of free benevolence,
the kind that has no price,
the pure goodness that is like daily bread
for the soul.
And I know that you dream, dream, dream, distant suns,
unfamiliar glimmers
and disappearing stars.
And I know that you dream, dream, dream,
like a mother pregnant with hundreds of
unfinished worlds, from your hands born.
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