Gloria Gervitz (29 March 1943 – 19 April 2022) was a Mexican poet and translator of Ukrainian Jewish descent.

Biography

Gervitz was born in Mexico City on 29 March 1943. Her paternal family arrived to Mexico in 1929, when her father was 9 years old.Gloria Gervitz y 'Migraciones': el poema de una vida
Milenio She studied at the Universidad Iberoamericana.Gervitz, Gloria
/ref> Gervitz resided in the United States.

Career

Gervitz studied Art History at the Universidad Iberoamericana. She has translated works by

Kenneth Rexroth Kenneth Charles Marion Rexroth (1905–1982) was an American poet, translator, and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement. Although he did not consider h ...

, Susan Howe, Lorine Niedecker, Rita Dove, and

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...

into Spanish.“Migraciones”, selección de poemas de Gloria Gervitz
Enlace Judío Between August and September 1976, when she was 33 years old, she began writing an organic poem, ''Migraciones'', which was first published in 1979 and is still in process. Since then, new additions to the poem have appeared in expanded and revised editions. ''Migraciones'' is the main work of the poet and it has been compared with other long poems such as ''Los Cantos'' by

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

, ''Cántico'' by Jorge Guillén, the ''Vertical Poetry'' by

Roberto Juarroz Roberto Juarroz (5 October 1925 – 31 March 1995) was an Argentine poet famous for his "''Poesía vertical''" (Vertical poetry). Biography Born in Coronel Dorrego, Roberto Juarroz published 14 volumes of poetry in all, numbered successively 1 ...

or the work by

Saint-John Perse Alexis Leger (; 31 May 1887 – 20 September 1975), better known by his pseudonym Saint-John Perse (; also Saint-Leger Leger), was a French poet-diplomat, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1960 "for the soaring flight and evocative ...

. Fragments of the poem have been translated into more than 18 languages. The poem, to date, consists of seven parts and more than 120 written pages; although most of the text is in Spanish, ''Migraciones'' contains phrases and words in

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...

Awards

In 2011, she received the PEN Mexico Prize for Literary Excellence. In 2019, Gervitz received the

Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award The Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award ( es, Premio Iberoamericano de Poesía Pablo Neruda) is an annual award granted by the National Council of Culture and the Arts (CNCA) of Chile, through the . It was created in 2004 by agreement betwe ...

, which is awarded by the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage of Chile.Gloria Gervitz gana el Neruda: "Este es mi primer premio"

La Tercera ''La Tercera'' ( es, The Third One), formerly known as ''La Tercera de la Hora'' ('the third of the hour'), is a daily newspaper published in Santiago, Chile and owned by Copesa. It is ''El Mercurio''s closest competitor. ''La Tercera'' is part o ...

In 2022, she received a posthumous PEN Oakland – Josephine Miles Literary Award for ''Migrations: Poem, 1976-2020'' (NYRB Poets, 2021).

Works

* 1979 - ''Shajarit'' * 1987 - ''Yizkor'' * 1986 - ''Fragmento de ventana'' * 1991 - ''Migraciones'' (''Shajarit'' and ''Yizkor'', plus the third part, entitled ''Leteo'') * 1993 - ''Migraciones'' (including the fourth part, ''Pythia'') * 1996 - ''Migraciones'' (including the fifth part, ''Equinoccio'') * 2000 - ''Migraciones'' (including the sixth part, ''Treno'') * 2003 - ''Migraciones'' (including the seventh part, ''Septiembre'').El cuerpo de la escritura. Una mirada a la obra de Gloria Gervitz
/ref> * 2021 - ''Migrations: Poem, 1976-2020''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gervitz, Gloria 1943 births 2022 deaths Mexican women poets 20th-century Mexican poets Mexican Jews 20th-century translators 20th-century Mexican women writers 21st-century Mexican poets 21st-century translators 21st-century Mexican women writers 20th-century Mexican Jews 21st-century Mexican Jews Mexican people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Writers from Mexico City Universidad Iberoamericana alumni