Gentleman Jacks Queer Social Club is hosting an evening of poetry with Diana Bellessi and Leo Boix to celebrate her new book: To Love A Woman / Amar a una mujer
Bellessi is a groundbreaking writer who has been credited as the godmother of LGBTQI+ poetry in Latin America. Over the decades she has championed feminist and queer issues and themes, and has exerted a strong influence on prominent poets and writers from the 1980’s through to the present day.
Bellessi’s direct, simple aesthetic style was adopted, in part, to speak directly to ordinary people of Argentina over the literary intelligentsia, part of her deep commitment to highlighting the social condition of the working class in Latin America, alongside progressive politics and ecological conservation.
A prolific writer, Bellessi has published 25 books and this selection draws from the whole range, charting the progression and evolution of her poetry. Largely untranslated until now, The Poetry Translation Centre is proud to be publishing this collection, many of the poems appearing in English for the first time.
Bellessi and Boix will be reading from To Love A Woman in the original Spanish with English translations, alongside a host of emerging queer poets.
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, 2004 Premio Konex Merit Award, and the 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 bilingual Latino British poet, translator and journalist. He has published two collections in Spanish, Un lugarpropio and Mar de noche. Boix is a fellow of The Complete Works and co-director of ‘Invisible Presence’. His English poems have appeared widely and his debut collection of English poetry, Ballad of a Happy Immigrant, was published by Chatto and Windus in 2021
