Diana Bellessi’s trail-blazing poetry has been a source of inspiration for successive generations of Argentine poets. For fifty years, her work has confronted social, ecological and colonial exploitation with poetry of ethical and lyrical integrity. She is often called the godmother of feminist & Lesbian poetry in Argentina.

To celebrate the publication ‘To Love A Woman’ the first single-author selection of her work to appear in English we are touring Bellessi around the UK. This new collection was translated by the poet Leo Boix, drawing on six of her most vital collections. At the heart of the book is a sequence of sensual love poems that helped to establish a new directness in Latin American queer poetics.

Bellessi will appear virtually at the Verve poetry festival, and in person at Lyra Poetry Festival, Bristol and in conversation with her translator Leo Boix and Erica Hesketh from the PTC at London Book Fair. Also, she will be part of a poetry team-up event called Storytellers in Translation at StAnza Poetry Festival with the Georgian poet Diana Anphimiadi.

Diana Bellessi

Diana Bellessi is a poet from the province of Santa Fé in Argentina. Born in 1946, she has become one of the foremost voices in Latin America, her many awards include: 1993 Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, 1996 Antorchas Foundation fellowship, 2004 Premio Konex, Merit Award, 2007 Fondo Nacional de las Artes, lifetime award in poetry. She is considered to be the godmother of feminist / LGBTQI+ / Lesbian poetry in Argentina and her work demonstrates a deep commitment to progressive politicals, ecological conservation and the social condition of the working class in Argentina and Latin America. Her poetry is seen as groundbreaking for its depiction of Lesbian desire and has exerted a strong influence on prominent poets and writers from the 80s and 90s through to the present day.

Leo Boix

Leo Boix is a Latino British poet, translator and journalist based in the UK. He has published two collections in Spanish, Un lugarpropio (2015) and Mar de noche (2017), and was included in many anthologies, such as Ten: Poets of the New Generation (Bloodaxe) and Why Poetry? (Verve Poetry Press). His English poems have appeared in Poetry, The Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, PNReview, The Rialto, Litro, Magma, Brittle Star, Letras Libres, South Bank Poetry, The Morning Star, The Laurel Review and elsewhere. Boix is a fellow of The Complete Works Program and co-director of ‘Invisible Presence’, a scheme to nurture new young voices of Latino poets in the UK.