Zaira Pacheco, translated by Lauren Shapiro

In the vibrant, minimalist landscape of this book, Puerto Rican poet Zaira Pacheco examines the interplay between illumination and obscurity, using cracks, fissures, pockets of shadows, and ancient water flows to reveal and conceal the traces of human presence. With an essential introduction by poet-translator, Lauren Shapiro, Waking in the Sahara is a dizzying exploration of origins set against the timeless backdrop of rock and sand. Pacheco, with Shapiro, constricts language to delve deeply into the spaces that lie beneath the limits of their names.

PRAISE

“There’s a fissure in the throat,” Zaira Pacheco tells us in Waking in the Sahara, in Lauren Shapiro’s new translation. Pacheco’s poems speak to and through the channels that appear in such cracks and “into the next cavity.” The poems are stark and serene. They illuminate a landscape where “bonfires dissolve” and the lungs collapse. Shapiro’s lucid translation shows the “liveforevers” that gleam there, between fog and steam. 

Zach Savich, Author of Daybed

Poetry, Spanish & English

Publication date: December 4, 2024

ISBN-13: 979-8-9863539-8-2

Format: Softcover, 160 pages, 6" x 9"