Coral Bracho

Biography

Coral Bracho, a Mexican writer and translator, was born on May 22, 1951, in Mexico City. She began her studies in Spanish Language and Literatures at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, was a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, and is now a professor in her hometown. As a writer she has published nine books of poetry, including El ser que va a morir (1981), La voluntad del ámbar (1998), and Ese espacio, ese jardín (2004), which had an impact on the national and international poetry scene. In addition, her work has been recognized by several literary awards, including the Aguascalientes National Poetry Prize and the Xavier Villaurrutia Award for the best book of the year.

Bracho’s poems bring deep reflections about the functioning of human life and nature. Her poetic construction discusses the dynamism of life and death, expressing the imminence of life through natural elements: nature and the body as one. This concept is explored in several of her works, including the book Peces de piel fugaz and the poems “La brisa” and “La actitud de los árboles” in her book, La voluntad del ámbar. Bracho’s long, rhythmic verses, capable of constructing images while reading, have had their relevance compared to that of John Ashbery in American verse.

Her poems have been published in several magazines and cultural publications in Mexico, as well as being featured in journals and anthologies in Europe and the Americas. Her international recognition resulted in the publication of Firefly Under the Tongue, a collection of her poems translated by Forrest Gander in 2008, and the translation of some of her poetry for the Poetry Translation Centre’s 2005 World Poets’ Tour by Tom Bool and Katherine Pierpoint.

Photo credits:

Author: Tania Victoria

Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Poems

The Breeze

Más que cantar, este pájaro insiste

The Posture of the Trees

Related Resources

Boll, Tom. ‘Abstract and Concrete: Translating Coral Bracho’. The Modern Language Review 103.2 (2008): 438–455. EBSCOhost. Web.
Bracho, Coral, and Gander, Forrest. Firefly under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho. New Directions Book, 2008. EBSCOhost. Web.
D’Aquino, Alfonso. ‘Review of Peces de piel fugaz by Coral Bracho’. Vuelta 3.33 (1979): 39–40. Print.
Estill, Adriana. ‘(Micro)Scoping the Body: Coral Bracho’s Green Poetics’. Hispanófila 129 (2000): 99–116. Print.
Huízar, Angélica J. ‘Arte y Poesía: Lo “performativo” En La Obra de Coral Bracho’. Memoria: XVII Coloquio de Las Literaturas Mexicanas. Ed. Gabriel Osuna Osuna. Hermosillo, Mexico: Universidad de Sonora, 1999. 139–145. EBSCOhost. Web.
Nicholson, Melanie. ‘Poesía Como Hiedra y Rizoma: Aprender a Leer a Coral Bracho’. Crítica Hispánica 24.1–2 (2002): 259–274. Print.
Sampson, Fiona. ‘The Best Recent Poetry -- Review Roundup; It Must Be a Misunderstanding by Coral Bracho; Imperium by Jay Gao; The Illustrated Woman by Helen Mort; The Arctic by Don Paterson; 12 Pamphlets by Selima Hill’. The Guardian (London, England) 2022. EBSCOhost. Web.
Solares, Mariana. ‘Reading Coral Bracho: Poetry of Imaginary, Material Spaces’. Confluencia: Revista Hispánica de Cultura y Literatura 21.2 (2006): 54–70. Print.
Veragra, Gloria. ‘Coral Brancho: Hacia Una Poética Del Ser’. Agathos: An International Review of the Humanities and Social Sciences II.2 (2011): 104–111. Print.