Tedi López Mills

Tedi López Mills, poet, translator and essayist was born in Mexico City in 1959. After studying philosophy at UNAM (‘Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México’) the author went to Paris and studied literature at the Sorbonne. After this she started to publish her poems in anthologies, her first poetry volume ‘Cinco estaciones’ came out in 1989. Her second followed in 1991, ‘Un lugar ajeno’. When ‘Segunda Persona’ came out she was awarded the ‘Efraín-Huerta Poetry Prize’ in 1994 which made the critics aware of López Mills. Her special style has been compared with the photography of Victor Flores, both marked themselves with a specific attitude to the time, which “in an apparent chaos, discovers the inner harmony of an actual subject or fact.”

In 1995 and 1996 the author received a grant from the ‘Fondo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes’ and the ‘Mexico/US Fund for Culture’ which enabled her to carry on with her work on her own poems and a selection of translations of the American poet Gustaf Sobin. In 1998 ‘Glosas’ came out. In the same year she became the first Mexican poet to receive the ‘Octavio Paz Poetry Grant’ from which, in 2000, her up until now last poetry volume came. ‘Horas’ is marked, like the other books before, by the author’s characteristic search for the reality of things. “In a world in which we are constantly presented with archetypes instead of actual things, memories instead of experiences and fantasies instead of originals, Tedi López Mills searches for the universal ‘in between’.” Inner and outer worlds are with this reflected against each for so long until they come together in a joint, concentrated spot. In ‘Un lugar ajeno’ she described the process like this: “My first experience was to find (create) an experience.”

Alongside her poetry, the author has also made a name for herself with translations of English, American and French literature (T.S. Eliot, Stephen Spender). López Mills has also published several anthologies and special editions of literary magazines which aim to make contemporary Latin American and Mexican poetry more well-known abroad. After ‘L’épreuve des mots. Poètes hispano-américains 1960-1995’ (1996), ‘Reversible Monuments: A New Anthology of Contemporary Mexican Poetry’ came out in October 2002 and most recently her novel ‘La noche en blanco de Mallarmé’ (2006) was published.

After Tedi López Mills worked as Managing Editor of the cultural magazine ‘La Gaceta’, from 1994-1999, she is member of the ‘Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte’ since October 2000. The author lives in Mexico City.

© international literature festival berlin

Cinco estaciones
Ediciones Toledo
México, 1989

Un lugar ajeno
Ediciones del Equilibrista
México, 1993

Segunda Persona
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana
México, 1994

Horas
Trilce
México, 2000

Luz por aire y agua
Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes
México, 2002

La noche en blanco de Mallarmé
Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes
México, 2006

Übersetzerin: Petra Strien