Paradise Empty brings together a wide selection of poetry from eleven collections by Hugo Mujica, one of Argentina's most renowned and respected poets. Mujica's work might be described as the poetry of thought. There is nothing superfluous in his poems - his images are crystal clear, his rhythms simple, his language precise - and their impact, in terms of both words and the silences between words, is powerful. Although his poetry is already well-known throughout South and Central America and in many European countries, Paradise Empty is the first collection of Mujica's work to be published in the UK, and in this beautifully modulated translation by Katherine M. Hedeen and the poet Victor Rodriguez Nunez, it is sure to resonate with English-language readers.
Mujica's work is wide-ranging, covering philosophy, anthropology, fiction, and poetry. At the age of thirteen, he began working at a glass factory, taking over for his father, who was blinded in a work accident. Ten years later, he arrived to the US in the early sixties and spent the decade in Greenwich Village and at the Free University studying the visual arts. He later became a Trappist monk and took a seven-year vow of silence. He has been a Catholic priest for more than two decades. In 2013, Vaso Roto, one of the Spanish-speaking world's most prestigious presses, published his "Complete Poetry, 1983-2011". That same year, Mujica won Spain's coveted Casa de America Poetry Prize with Cuando todo calla.
