Shearsman NEWS

Hover over the above cover for the new edition of the Selected Poems...

We've just released a volume of Huidobro's uncollected poems, which — although it contains a number of stray manuscripts that were not central to his work — also includes the text of a poem long thought to have been lost and two translations thereof into English by the author himself. We are grateful to the Cuban poet — now based in Barcelona — Pedro Marqués de Armas, who tracked down the original text as published in Havana's Diario de la Marina in 1927 and kindly provided his scans of the poem for our publication. In addition, the Fundación Vicente Huidobro (Huidobro Foundation) and the Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago have provided, and approved for publication, scans of the author's own typewritten English translation of this poem, in two separate versions. Until they arrived, we had no idea that there WERE two versions of the translation. No previous book that we have seen has mentioned this.

In the wake of this volume appearing, we have also reissued the Selected Poems in a new edition. The first edition in 2019 was prepared early in out exploration of the author's oeuvre and all of the poems in that edition have now appeared in their rightful places elsewhere in the series, often in updated versions. We have also taken the opportunity to replace a couple of pieces with more appropriate selections, now that the entire series is getting closer to completion and more minor pieces can be found in the new Uncollected, and in the other single volumes already issued. Two volumes of poetry remain pending: Altazor, and the Painted Poems, both of which have been delayed yet again. The former has caused some considerable indigestion, and we are loathe to issue a version which doesn't meet our standards. Right now, it doesn't, but work progresses. The latter has changed shape several times but I am confident that we now have a suitable presentation, and it will appear in 2026. Also pending is the novel, Papa, or the Diary of Alicia Mir, probably the last of the author's fictions to join our list.