“An outward intimacy, that’s Transit. But not only that, Transit is also the everyday experience of Mexico City—how could we truly experience a city, except through the steps we’ve walked a thousand times? I’m talking about an edified consciousness that most people let slip past (without seeing). Claudina’s reflection, via writing, pauses at thought-places that are about to collapse, at peeling and tottering corners, at dirty windows waiting to be noticed before vanishing. Architectonic epochs of a city and epochs of thought, together. Thus, it strikes me as no coincidence that this book by Claudina Domingo in particular should show how to walk on the tightrope of language, or along the edge of spaces where meaning dwells between parentheses.” —Dolores Dorantes, author of Copy

“Like Mexico City, the metropolis so kaleidoscopically chronicled and celebrated here, Claudina Domingo’s Transit refuses stasis, singularity, and complacency. These poems don’t so much describe movement as they enact it; they aren’t so much a map as the feet, the breath, the eyes of countless bodies tracing it, over the centuries and in the fractured, ebullient now. Again and again, I found myself pierced by my favorite revelation as a reader: So a poem can do this! Again and again, too, I felt it about Ryan Greene’s astounding English version (a word that falls far short of what he makes new): So a translation can do this! As readers of Transit, we get to join Greene and Domingo as they think and walk together through ‘a city that doesn’t fear the precipice.’ They don’t fear it, either, and the journey is thrilling.” —Robin Myers, Translator of In Vitro by Isabel Zapata

“Those of us who live (in) Mexico City feel an emotional ambivalence toward her because, the Giant, she can be multicultural and exclusionary, innovative and conservative, cosmopolitan and traditional, ours and nobody's. In this booming dynamic, Claudina Domingo walks (with) the Giant to traverse her from beginning to end (if she has one) in Transit: she brings us through the streets, takes us on the metro, stops us in the markets, contains us in the monuments. Amid grand features and minor details, the poet (re)writes in a unique time spectrum (which contains past-present-future) and shares with us this eternal return to that megacity we love and hate because ‘to return is a dazzling word (and a soothing notion).’" —Karen Villeda, author of Constantinopla

About the Author

Claudina Domingo (b. 1982) is a poet and storyteller from Mexico City. In 2011, she was named “emerging writer of the year” by the magazine La Tempestad. Her book of poems, Tránsito (Tierra Adentro), won the 2012 Premio Iberoamericano Bellas Artes de Poesía Carlos Pellicer para Obra Publicada. Her most recent book of poems, Ya sabes que no veo de noche (Ediciones Atrasalante), won the 2016 Premio Nacional de Literatura Gilberto Owen. She is also an author of fiction, and she has published a collection of short stories, Las enemigas (Editorial Sexto Piso), an “oneiric biography,” La noche en el espejo (Editorial Sexto Piso), and, most recently, the autobiographic novel Dominio (Editorial Sexto Piso). In 2022, she was awarded the Premio Nacional de Poesía Enriqueta Ochoa for her book Material hospitalario, and in 2024 she received the Premio Clemencia Isaura de Poesía for her collection Reconquista del Reino de Kaan.

About the Translator

Ryan Greene (b. 1994) is a translator, book farmer, and poet from Phoenix, Arizona. He’s a co-conspirator at F*%K IF I KNOW//BOOKS [www.fiikbooks.org] and a housemate at no.good.home [www.nogoodhome.com]. His translations include collections of poetry by Claudina Domingo, Elena Salamanca, Ana Belén López, Giancarlo Huapaya, and Yaxkin Melchy, among others. Since 2018, he has co-facilitated the Cardboard House Press Cartonera Collective bookmaking workshops at Palabras Bilingual Bookstore. Like Collier, the ground he stands on is not his ground.