Night in the North [E-Book]
Night in the North [E-Book]
Formats: E-Pub, PDF
Author: Fabián Severo
Translators: Laura Cesaro Eglin, Jesse Lee Kercheval
172 pages
Night in the North is an autobiographical long poem that chronicles the author’s experience growing up in Artigas, Uruguay, a linguistic and cultural borderland nestled between Brazil and Argentina. In a series of stark scenes, Severo revisits moments from his childhood—sketching a rare map of the subtle, yet violent, mechanisms that marginalize culturally specific communities. A luminous meditation on poverty and imaginative possibility.
A poem from Night in the North in The New Yorker
A poem from Night in the North in Poetry
Print Edition
Praise for Night in the North
“The speaker of Fabián Severo’s remarkable book narrates the struggles of a life lived in a provincial town in Uruguay, but it is not the hardships that a reader will remember, but the hopes, the tender interiority, the intimate knowledge of a place this remarkable poet de-scribes. Rendered in precise and elegant English by Eglin and Kercheval, this book will be a revelation to American readers as it introduces a voice on uncommon clarity and sensitivity, both retrospective and pinned to a hopeful future, from a poet of great expressive gifts.”
“‘Life is like that/ the less you have/ the more you dream,’ Fabián Severo’s whimsical yet somber, realistic and tireless narrator states. Written from a place called Artigas, border terrain not possessed by the people who inhabit it, in a language that ‘flies loose and free through the sky,’ these poems, so adeptly translated by Jesse Lee Kercheval and Laura Cesarco Eglin, address troubles of poverty, displacement and abuse in surprisingly simple yet forceful, elegant language. I too wonder ‘if God exists/ and we are all his children/ how can there be a place you’re not allowed in?’”
“‘María always tells the same story,/ and her face becomes so happy/ that one is filled with sadness.’ Such are the many-layered emotional resonances in Fabián Severo’s astonishing collection Night in the North, which follows the narrator as he records memories of daily life in a small border town in Uruguay. I am in awe of the tender intimacy Severo captures between people living through and into poverty and hardship, in the small tokens that illuminate both sorrow and richness. In sharp and precise language, Laura Cesarco Eglin and Jesse Lee Kercheval bring a much-needed voice into American literature.”
About the Author
Fabián Severo (Artigas, Uruguay, 1981) is the author of the books Noite nu Norte, Viento de nadie, NósOtros, and Viralata. His poems have appeared in magazines in Words Without Borders, Poetry, Drunken Boat, and The New Yorker. His work appears in América invertida: An Anthology of Emerging Uruguayan Poets (2016). In 2017, he received the Uruguayan National Prize for Literature for his novel Viralata. In 2012, he received the Justino Zavala Muniz Fellowship in the Arts from the Uruguayan Ministry of Education and Culture, and in 2011, he was awarded the Bronze Morsoli Medal in the Poetry from the Foundation Lolita Rubia.
About the Translators
Laura Cesarco Eglin is a poet and translator. She is the translator of Of Death. Minimal Odes by Hilda Hilst, (co•im•press), which won the 2019 Best Translated Book Award in Poetry. Her translations from Spanish, Portuguese, Portuñol, and Galician have appeared in journals, including Timber, Exchanges, Modern Poetry in Translation, Eleven Eleven, The Massachusetts Review, and Gulf Coast. Cesarco Eglin’s latest poetry collections include Life, One Not Attached to Conditionals, Occasions to Call Miracles Appropriate, and Reborn in Ink (trans. Jagoe and Kercheval). She is the publisher of Veliz Books.
Jesse Lee Kercheval is a poet, fiction writer, and translator. Her latest books include America that island off the coast of France and Underground Women. Her translations include The Invisible Bridge: Selected Poems of Circe Maia and Still Life with Defeats: Selected Poems of Tatiana Oroño. She is also the editor of América invertida: An Anthology of Emerging Uruguayan Poets. She is the Zona Gale Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.