23. ilb 06. – 16.09.2023
Portrait Homero Aridjis
© Betty Ferber

Homero Aridjis

The youngest of five brothers, Homero Aridjis was born in 1940 in the village of Contepec, Michoacán, Mexico, to a Mexican mother and a Greek father. He began writing at the age of 11, after surviving an accident that nearly cost him his life. He won a scholarship from the Mexican Writers’ Centre at the age of 19, and in 1964 was the youngest-ever recipient of the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize for best book of the year, for »Mirándola dormir« (tr: Watching Her Sleep), a classic of erotic poetry. After two years in Europe on a Guggenheim scholarship, he taught at American universities before entering the Mexican diplomatic service and serving as ambassador to Switzerland and then The Netherlands, while still in his thirties. Back in Mexico, in 1985 Aridjis and 99 other renowned artists and intellectuals founded the legendary Grupo de los Cien, an activist organization that addresses national and international environmental and ethical issues. He served two terms as president of PEN International between 1997 and 2003, during which he strove to make PEN less Eurocentric. Aridjis was Mexico’s ambassador to UNESCO from 2007 until 2010, and since then has lived in Mexico City.

In addition to nineteen volumes of poetry and seventeen novels, Aridjis has written children’s books, essays, and plays, and for many years was an editorial page columnist for Mexican newspapers “La Jornada” and »Reforma«. His work has been translated into fifteen languages and recognized with literary prizes such as the Grinzane Cavour in Italy, for »1492: Vida y tiempos de Juan Cabezón de Castilla« (1985; Eng. »1492: The Life and Times of Juan Cabezón of Castile«, 1991; German “1492 – Die Abenteuer des Juan Cabezón von Kastilien”, 1992). In 1997 he received the Prix Roger Caillois in France, and in 2002 the Smederevo Golden Key poetry prize. In 2013, 2016 and 2019 translations of two recent books received international poetry awards in Italy. A wide-ranging bilingual anthology of his poetry was published in England (2001) and the United States (2002) under the title, »Eyes to See Otherwise: Selected Poems of Homero Aridjis«, and “Augen eines anderen Schauens” came out in Germany in 2009. In 2012 “Tiempo de ángeles/A Time of Angels” was published by  Fondo de Cultura Económica and City Lights.   Kenneth Rexroth called Aridjis a »visionary poet of lyrical bliss, crystalline concentrations and infinite spaces.«

A champion of grey whales, monarch butterflies, sea turtles, and rain forests, Aridjis has been nicknamed the »green conscience« of his country. His passionate defense of the Earth has been acknowledged with numerous international awards, including the UNEP Global 500 Award, the Orion Society’s John Hay Award, and the Millennial Award for International Environmental Leadership given by Mikhail Gorbachev.

News of the Earth (2017) is an autobiography of his relationship with the natural world through his extensive writings and 33 years of activism as founder and president of  the Group of 100, a historical record of the group’s battles and victories and a chronicle of the rise of environmental awareness in Mexico.  Aridjis has written, “I have often felt like Sisyphus, confronting the same environmental problems over and over again, or Cassandra, prophesying disaster, or Don Quijote, because we sometimes seem like madmen tilting at windmills. Although the plant and animal species we defend, or the rivers and forests, will never know we defended them, often at risk to our lives, “in dreams begins responsibility,” as William Butler Yeats wrote, and for me there is nothing more tyrannical than a dream.”

 

Watch Homero Aridjis at the 20th ilb on our YouTube-Channel:

https://youtu.be/RVLSktTycEg

https://youtu.be/kE9-fTWsH-c

Bibliographie

Mirándola dormir

Joaquín Mortiz

Mexico, 1964

Perséfone

Joaquín Mortiz

Mexico, 1967

Persephone

Avenutra/Vintage

New York, 1986

Los espacios azules

Joaquín Mortiz

Mexico, 1969

El poeta niño

Fondo de Cultura Económica

Mexico, 1971

The Child Poet

Archipelago Books

New York, 2016

1492 vida y tiempos de Juan Cabezón de Castilla,

Ed. Siglo XXI

Mexico, 1985

1492 – Die Abenteuer des Juan Cabezón von Kastilien

Benziger

Zürich, 1992 [Ü: Harald Riemann]

Memorias del Nuevo Mundo

Editorial Diana

Mexico, 1988

Gran teatro del fin del mundo y Espectáculo del año dos mil

Fondo de Cultura Económica

Mexico,  1994

El señor de los últimos días: Visiones del año mil

Edhasa

Barcelona, 1994

The Lord of the Last Days: Visions of the Year 1000

William Morrow

New York, 1995

¿En quien piensas cuando haces el amor?

Alfaguara

Mexico, 1996

Eyes to See Otherwise / Ojos de otro mirar

Carcanet & New Directions

Manchester, 2001 & New York, 2002 

La zona de silencio

Alfaguara

Mexico, 2002

Augen eines anderen Schauens

Edition Delta

Stuttgart, 2009 [Ü: Juana u. Tobias Burghardt]

Tiempo de ángeles/ A Time of Angels

Fondo de Cultura Económica & City Lights

Mexico & San Francisco, 2012

Carne de Dios

Alfaguara

Mexico, 2015

News of the Earth

Mandel Vilar Press

Simsbury, Connecticut, 2017

El testamento del dragón

Alfaguara/Penguin Random House

Mexico, 2018

La poesía llama

Fondo de Cultura Económica

Mexico, 2018

Antología poética, 1960-2018

Ediciones Cátedra

Madrid, 2018