Merida Faculty - January 2009: Pedro Serrano
Pedro Serrano was born in Montreal, Canada in 1957. He was a founder of the Cartapacios "Notebooks" literature magazine, editor-in-chief of the magazine Mexico en el Arte "Mexico in Art", and is member founder of the magazine Fractal.
Pedro Serrano has published several books of poems:
Nueces ("Nuts") is forthcoming.
Desplazamientos ("Displacements"), Editorial Candaya - Candaya Poesia 5 (2007), with a CD by the author
Turba ("Peat"), Ediciones sin Nombre, Mexico (2005)
Tres Poemas ("Three Poems"), Pequena Venecia, Caracas (2000)
Ignoranica ("Ignorance"), El Equilibrista, Mexico (1994)
El Miedo ("Fear"), El Toucan de Virginia, Mexico (1986)
Pedro Serrano is included in several anthologies, including:
Líneas Conectadas: nueva poesía de los Estados Unidos (Connecting Lines: New Poetry from Mexico), Sarabande Books (2006)
(ed. Luis Cortes Bargallo and Forrest Gander as translation editor)
Reversible Monuments: An Anthology of Contemporary Mexican Poetry, Copper Canyon Press (2002)
With Carlos López Beltrán, he edited and translated the groundbreaking anthology, La generación del cordero: Antología de la poesía actual en las Islas Británicas ("The Lamb Generation"), Trilce Ediciones (2000), which brought together translations of thirty contemporary British poets. He has translated Shakespeare's King John into Spanish, Norma Ediciones (2001) as well as the poems of Irish poet, Matthew Sweeney, No arroje piedras a este letrero, Trilce Ediciones (2001).
Pedro Serrano wrote the libretto for the opera, Las Marimbas de l'Exil/El Norte in Veracruz (music by Luc LeMasne), which toured through France and Mexico to great acclaim. He has pubilshed essays and poems in Mexican publications, Letras Libres, Casa del Tiempo, Diálogos, Gaceta del Fondo de Cultura Económica, Vuelta y Cartapacios and in Spanish publications Babelia, Revista de Libros, Rosa Cúbica, Revista Atlántica de Poesía, Sibila, El Rapto de Europa, Guaraguao and Frontera. One of Pedro's noteworthy essays is entitled Translating Amiri Baraka Into Spanish and was published by The Antioch Review (Summer, 2000).
Pedro studied Spanish literature at Mexico's National Autonomous University (his doctoral thesis was a comparitive analysis of the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Octavio Paz) and English literature at the University of London. He was invited to conduct research as part of the Faculty of Philology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain and has taught classes in Poetry and Philosophy on the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona. He is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Mexico.
Mr. Serrano holds a doctorate in Spanish literature and is currently a Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City.
He is also currently the editor of UNAM's notable poetry publication, Periodico de Poesia, which can be accessed here
"Pedro Serrano es todo menos confesional, es todo menos abstracto. Llama a las imágenes sin prisa, les concede el espacio, las acomoda. Con toda deliberación ha escogido el tono poético y la índole metafórica, y ambas decisiones se desprenden de la lectura a la vez compulsiva y metafórica. ¿Por qué nunca confino a Serrano en una sola actitud? Fundamentalmente por la distancia, entrañable o afectuosa, como se quiera, que establece con las imágenes; por la decisión de no elegir una sola vertiente. Pedro Serrano es un poeta de la inteligencia sensible o de la sensibilidad lúcida como se prefiera, y eso le permite a sus lectores gozar de sus poemas desde el doble razonamiento de las imágenes y de los conceptos. " -- Carlos Monsiváis
More about Pedro Serrano here