“NOW, closer to the earth,/ I see the same things/ but I see more,” writes Argentinian poet Mirta Rosenberg (1951-2019) in one of her luminous poems from Interior Landscape/El Paisaje Interior (Ugly Duckling Presse, £17). 

Translated by Yaki Setton and Sergio Waisman, this mini-anthology of Rosenberg’s work, which also includes some of her translations of other poets such as James Fenton and Kay Ryan, is packed with beautiful poems that explore the place and voice of the poet in the world. 

“The head above/ below arms/ hands and feet, my work,/ the trunk with its waist/ a culture from the south,/ the knees, the hips/ fingers, hair, nails, viscera, gums./ Sit down and in a list/ finish off the biography.” 

Rosenberg’s surgical use of language and her unique combination of elements from everyday life, such as a cat, a lemon or potatoes being cooked, with philosophical musings, make her a remarkable poet in Argentina and Latin America. 

Setton and Waisman write in their illuminating introduction that Rosenberg: “often takes tensions between form and content, between voice and body to the limit.” And often, out of that tension, exact and incisive poems are born. “Words that burn red,/ impure/ like laughter, warming us even in the darkest and/ coldest of nights.”

Carlos Soto Roman’s 11 (Ugly Duckling Presse, £18) alludes to the events of September 11 1973, in Chile, when dictator Augusto Pinochet orchestrated a military coup to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. This coup started a 17-year bloody dictatorship that upended Chile’s political and social system and left over 3,000 dead or missing, tortured tens of thousands of prisoners, and drove an estimated 200,000 Chileans into exile. 

This collection, originally published in 2017 in Spanish and collaboratively translated by eight people, incorporates found material such as declassified documents, testimonies, interviews, and media files. It turns these official archives into a narrative of state-sponsored terror and violence. 

“Afterward they started throwing them into the ocean, near San Antonio, I think./ Did they do anything to them before throwing them in?/ They say they opened them./ Opened them?/ Their stomachs. To keep them from floating.” 

The book uses various poetic forms like collage, erasure, and appropriation to emphasize the fragmented language emerging from censorship during military rule. There are poems in the shape of official forms, poems listing torture procedures, numbers of “disappeared,” and even an image of a coin from 1973 that ironically reads in its centre “Libertad” (Freedom). 

The collection by Soto Roman, a powerful exercise in documentary poetics, evokes how collective memory, state violence and oppression have shaped Chile, a nation still grappling with the long-lasting consequences of its traumatic past.

Vo(i)ces II: Stories of Life, Death, and Beyond (Victorina Press, £8) is a bilingual poetry anthology in English and Spanish. 

The book features the winning and commended poems from the Victorian Press Poetry Award 2022, a competition initiated by Consuelo Rivera Fuentes, the publisher’s founder, who was an unstoppable poet, editor and activist. Sadly, Consuelo passed away this year at age 72 after battling a long illness. 

The anthology features poems by David Bleiman, Mabel Encinas, Lester Gomez Medina, Caroline Hickman Vaughan, Keith Jarrett, Sarah Leavesley, Mandy Macdonald, Lee Nash, Virginia Ramos Poseck, Marina Sanchez, and Mark Totterdell. 

One of my favourite poems in the collection is Sanchez’s Choosing Mother’s Last Flowers, which beautifully portrays the themes of motherhood, death, and Mexico. The poem reads: “Not for you the sunlight of cempasuchil/ marigolds, how disgusting!/ You’d exclaim, ¡Ay que asco, flor de muertos!/ Not for you the radiance of alhelis blancos/ white wallflowers, so common./ You’d turn your nose up, ¡Que vulgares! […] Me, like a typical Mexican, I love your favourite too, though they always scratch their signature on my skin./ Rosas. Fragrant. Blood red.” 

Another notable poem is Virginia Ramos Posek’s The First of November, which describes the poet’s home with “windows wide open” and “buds of spring” that are “closed off by the nacre/ carapace of a tortoise.”

This anthology is a wonderful showcase of contemporary poetry that explores themes of loss, grief and the beauty of our changing world.