Shearsman Books, 2022
PRAISE FOR rebel matter:
This magnificent selection from two decades of work by Víctor Rodríguez Núñez confirms his pivotal position in international poetry. Dissolving fixed identities and formal limitations alike, the mercurial spaces of these poems reveal multiple selves, elliptical journeys and a passionate attention to everyday sensory experience. This is Cuban poetry energized by transcultural encounters, while two vital language currents of the Americas, Spanish and English, meet in Katherine Hedeen’s scintillating translations. As ‘rebel matter’, these are poems that engage with the world in its elements – molten, fluid and restless. They invite the reader to tune in to new frequencies, not just to the sonic pleasures of language, but also to the lively matter of a universe beyond the human, its squirrels, asphalt, dust clouds and stars. Poetry’s imaginative potential, Rodríguez Núñez reminds us, generates forms of dialogue that are more urgent now than ever: ‘there won’t be revolution / if we don’t let night speak’.
—Zoë Skoulding