Diego Valverde Villena

Diego Valverde Villena

Diego Valverde Villena, born on April 6, 1967, is a Spanish poet of Peruvian origin and Bolivian roots.

Life

Villena was born on April 6, 1967 in Lima, Peru. In 1971, when he was four, his family left Peru for Spain. Like many other writers, he studied at a Jesuit school, San Jose (St Joseph), in Valladolid. From 1985 to 1991 he earned three BLitt (Spanish, English and German) in the University of Valladolid. During this time he also attended courses on language and literature in the University of Salamanca (Scandinavian languages), University of Edinburgh (Modernism), University College Dublin (Irish literature and culture) and the University of Wroclaw (Polish language and literature). Afterwards he undertook doctorate studies on Medieval English Literature in the University of Oxford, the University of Heidelberg, the University of Tübingen, the University of Chicago and the Complutense University of Madrid.

Valverde Villena worked as a lecturer in several universities, mainly in the Universidad Mayor de San Andres (La Paz, Bolivia), where he taught Medieval Lyric, Baroque Lyric and Poetry between 1996 and 1998. From 2002 to 2004 he worked in the staff of the Secretary of State for Culture in Spain.

He has translated into Spanish literary works written by Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, John Donne, George Herbert, Ezra Pound, Emily Dickinson, Paul Éluard, Valery Larbaud, Nuno Júdice, Jorge de Sousa Braga and Paul Celan.

Style

According to the poet Julio Martínez Mesanza (cf. References), Valverde Villena's poetry comes from "a perfect mixture of life and culture". His cultural references serve as proper devices to show the poet's feelings in a way which resembles the conceit used by the Metaphysical poets. Martínez Mesanza also points at John Donne and Ausias March as influences on Valverde Villena.

Valverde Villena's short poems have been called by some critics as "flash poems" or "spark poems", because they concentrate many ideas in a few lines. In the words of the poet Higazi, "it's like having a big lion in a little cage".

There are many sources to Valverde Villena's poetry: not only the literary tradition of several languages, but also History, Anthropology, Religion, Music and Cinema.

Works

Poetry

• El difícil ejercicio del olvido, La Paz, Bolivia, 1997.

• Chicago, West Barry, 628, Sueltos de la Selva Profunda, Logroño, 2000.

• No olvides mi rostro, Huerga y Fierro, Madrid, 2001.

• Infierno del enamorado, Valladolid, 2002.

• El espejo que lleva mi nombre escrito, Cairo, 2006.

• Shir Hashirim, Ediciones del Caracol Descalzo, Madrid, 2006.

• Iconos, a three-part poem -a triptych of icons- released with the music composed for it by Juan Manuel Ruiz, 2008.

• Un segundo de vacilación, La Paz, Bolivia, 2011.

Anthologies

• 33 de Radio 3, Calamar/RNE 3, Madrid, 2004.

• Antología de poesía española y egipcia contemporánea, Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos, Madrid, 2005.

• Diez poetas, diez músicos, Calambur, Madrid, 2008.

Essays

• Para Catalina Micaela: Álvaro Mutis, más allá del tiempo, UMSA, La Paz, Bolivia, 1997.

• “Poesía boliviana reciente” en La Jornada Semanal, Mexico, June 27 1999.

• “El espejo de la calle Gaona: los pasadizos entre ficción y realidad en Jorge Luis Borges”, Clarín, 30, Nov.-Dec. 2000, pp. 5-10.

• “Don Álvaro ante el rey, tantos años después”, Clarín, 32, March-April 2001, pp. 3-8.

• “Mujeres de mirada fija y lento paso: el eterno femenino en la poesía de Álvaro Mutis”, Excelsior, Mexico, June 7 2002.

• “Hechos de armas bajo la bandera de Álvaro Mutis”, Letras Libres, 10, July 2002, pp. 46-48.

• “Spain: Agape and conviviality at the table”, in Culinary Cultures of Europe, Council of Europe Publishing, Strasbourg, 2005.

• “Al amparo de Isis (un viaje a Egipto)”, in Clarín, 63, May-June 2006, pp. 66-68.

• "Cuando Stonewall Jackson conoció al General Lee: una semblanza de José María Álvarez", introduction to Los prodigios de la cera, by José María Álvarez, Caracas, 2008, pp. 13-17.

• "Los caminos de T. S. Eliot", in Renacimiento, Seville, 2008, pp. 106-108.

Prose translations

• Nuestro visitante de medianoche y otras historias, by Arthur Conan Doyle, Valdemar, Madrid, 2001.

• La vida imperial de Rudyard Kipling (The Long Recessional), by David Gilmour, Seix Barral, Barcelona, 2003.

• En interés de la Hermandad (In the Interests of the Brethren), by Rudyard Kipling, in Conde de Aranda, 3, 2007, pp. 91-110.

Editions

• Alvaro Mutis, La voz de Alvaro Mutis, edited by Diego Valverde Villena, Poesía en la Residencia, Residencia de Estudiantes, Madrid, 2001.

• Luis Alberto de Cuenca, De amor y de amargura, edited, selected and with a preface by Diego Valverde Villena, Renacimiento, Seville, 2005.

References

• Martinez Mesanza, Julio, "Diego Valverde Villena: palabras cultas, palabras vivas", in Nueva revista, 79, Jan.-Feb. 2002, pp. 162-163.

• Gomez Villegas, Nicanor, "La materia Valverdiana", Ojos de papel, April, 2008[1]

• Sayed Mohamed Sayed Qutb, "Retoques incompletos, meta del poeta entre Diego Valverde Villena y Ali Mansour", in Medio siglo de hispanismo en Egipto (1957-2007), Cairo, Darat al-Karaz, 2008, pp. 163-170 and 217-221.

External links

• Serbia (with poems in Spanish and Serbian): [2]

• Spain (an essay about Alvaro Mutis): [3]

• Spain (an essay about Juan Eduardo Cirlot): [4]

• Mexico (an essay about contemporary Bolivian poetry): [5]

• Ireland ("Metro de Chicago" read by the poet himself): [6]

• Bolivia (an interview with Diego Valverde Villena): [7]

• Spain (about Diego Valverde Villena): [8]

Persondata
Name	Valverde Villena, Diego
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Date of birth	1967
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