30 January 2019

In this article for Tin House, I wrote about how five poets are experiencing the violence and repression of the current political regime. The article introduced a series of poems that I translated with Nicaraguan poet Ulises Alaniz:

When you live in Nicaragua, says 31-year-old poet Ulises Alaniz, “ it’s like you never get over things. It’s like tragedy after tragedy after tragedy.” In recent years, Nicaragua has enjoyed relative peace in a region otherwise torn by violence. In April 2018, all of that changed. Since then, the government of President Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, have killed at least 325 and as many as 500 people for protesting the government. About 500 people have been jailed as political prisoners; dozens of them have claimed to have been tortured. According to local human rights groups, about 1,300 people have been disappeared. More than 50,000 Nicaraguans (the country has a population of approximately 6.2 million) have fled, mostly to neighboring Costa Rica.

Keep reading at Tin House.