Alex Pausides is a poet and editor born in Ensenada de Mora, Pilón de Manzanillo, Cuba in 1950. He directed the monthly cultural magazine El Caimán Barbudo and currently serves as president of the Writer’s Association and general coordinator of the Havana International Poetry Festival. He also leads Colección Sur Editores. His poems have been translated into Portuguese, French, Italian, English, Romanian, Slovenian, Russian and German. Pausides many published works include Ah mundo amor mío (1978); Aquí campeo a lo idílico (1978); Malo de magia (1990); Palabras a la innombrable (1992); Cuaderno del artista adolescente (1993); Habitante del viento (1995); La casa del hombre (1996); La Tinta del Alcatraz (1997); Llaman desde algún sitio feliz (1998); Elogio dell´utopia (1998); Pequeña gloria (2000); Canción de Orfeo (2004); Ensenada de mora (2005); La extensión de la inocencia (2006). Pausides won the Abril Award in 1990; Gaceta de Cuba Prize in 1999; the Critic’s Award in 2005; and the Samuel Feijoo’s Prize of Friends of the Country Economy Society in 2009.
Judith Ayn Bernhard is a former Berlitz School of Languages instructor and translator. She is a founding member and past chair of The Marin Poetry Center and a current member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade. She lives in San Francisco with her husband where she teaches writing and occasionally gives public readings of her work. Her book of poems, Prisoners of Culture, is available from CC. Marimbo Press.
Margaret Randall is an American translator, poet, essayist, oral historian, photographer and social activist. She lived in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua for 23 years. Randall has published more than 100 books of poetry, prose and oral history, including numerous books on Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Vietnamese women. Randall recently wrote The Morning After: Poetry and Prose in a Post-Truth World and Che on My Mind: a feminist reflection on the life and legacy of Che Guevara. She has read her poetry and the poetry of others and lectured on women’s issues and cultural and political topics at dozens of universities and other institutions. Randall has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors for her writings in the United States and across the globe for her tireless work to advance the status of women and improve human rights. In 2017, she received a Lifetime Achievement for Literature and Human Rights Activism from KPFA in California as well as a Medal of Literary Merit from Literatura en El Bravo, from the state of Chihuahua, Mexico.
Judith Ayn Bernhard is a former Berlitz School of Languages instructor and translator. She is a founding member and past chair of The Marin Poetry Center and a current member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade. She lives in San Francisco with her husband where she teaches writing and occasionally gives public readings of her work. Her book of poems, Prisoners of Culture, is available from CC. Marimbo Press.
Margaret Randall is an American translator, poet, essayist, oral historian, photographer and social activist. She lived in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua for 23 years. Randall has published more than 100 books of poetry, prose and oral history, including numerous books on Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Vietnamese women. Randall recently wrote The Morning After: Poetry and Prose in a Post-Truth World and Che on My Mind: a feminist reflection on the life and legacy of Che Guevara. She has read her poetry and the poetry of others and lectured on women’s issues and cultural and political topics at dozens of universities and other institutions. Randall has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors for her writings in the United States and across the globe for her tireless work to advance the status of women and improve human rights. In 2017, she received a Lifetime Achievement for Literature and Human Rights Activism from KPFA in California as well as a Medal of Literary Merit from Literatura en El Bravo, from the state of Chihuahua, Mexico.
Ulysses Speaks
Praxis
Poet on the Island
Ulysses Speaks
We have lived clipping our own wings as though wings were flight
Praxis
We are not in no man’s land And you won’t have to tie me to the mast with my ears covered The enchanted music is certainly not the enemy And no one is afraid of the whispers hovering near us My small boat cuts through the pristine waters But Ithaca is more than a daydream Ithaca is something more than a hazard on the horizon
Poet on the Island
They haven't torn my smiles from my face you can't brand love no one's kicked me from my house I sleep peacefully, legally at night without dreaming the pigs are at my door and when I wake no one's looking through the blinds. They didn't call at my keyhole yesterday asking about the poem against them they can't erase my candor they didn't kill my child in my arms my loved one on my lips my homeland in my song. They haven't lynched me my skin is no map of currents they didn't pull my nails out forcing me to say yes didn't tear out my testicles by the roots fill me full of lead for whistling curse me send me into exile they don't kill my dew or flower terrorize my doves when I dream, dream in the streets no one pulls me apart no one silenced the guitars with one blow no one pushes me into my own heart no one ever hit me in the middle of a poem they let me grow. I carry my island like a flower that rains I carry my time like a great promise on my cheek…
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