Description:
Today autumn is a blue stone,
a trigger's pull in the night;
a mere murmur: the caress that spreads its wings.
Brief description: José Javier Villarreal is a Mexican poet born in 1959 in Tecate. He is the author of Mar del Norte (1988), Portuaria (1997), Bíblica (1998), La Santa (2007), Campo Alaska (2012), Una señal del cielo (2017), Los secretos engarces (2021), and Retratos de familia (2025), among others. He is also a translator and essayist. Awards he has received include the Premio Nacional de Poesía Aguascalientes, the Premio Nacional de Poesía Alfonso Reyes, the Premio a las Artes UANL, and the World Cultural Council Award. His work has been trans lated into French, Portuguese, and Italian. Since 2020, he has directed the international poetry series El oro de los tigres.
Review Quotes:
José Javier Villarreal belongs to the generation of Mexican poets who transformed national poetry in the 1980s. With North Sea-winner of the Premio Nacional de Poesía
Aguascalientes in 1987-he created a book where the North of Mexico becomes a stage for myth, memory, and the restless movement of the sea. At once musical and expansive, these poems open a path from the regional to the universal. Scott Bennett's translation invites new readers into a collection that remains a touchstone of modern Mexican literature.
Danny Anderson