Description
Selected by Francisco Aragón as winner of the Alta California Chapbook Prize, Sor Juana is a dazzling long poem by Florencia Milito.
“Sor Juana reveals an exquisite alchemy—the provocative life and death of the baroque master, but also the speaker’s own ‘inherited trauma’ as ‘a child of [a] dictatorship,’ which follows her into exile, prompting: ‘This is the heart of the wound.’ The artistry here is replete with skill and grace. ‘History wedges itself / inside four syllables’—the thesis of this breathtaking book-length poem.”
—Francisco Aragón, Final Judge, Alta California Prize
Florencia Milito is a bilingual poet, writer, and translator whose work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Indiana Review, Catamaran, Diálogo, 92nd Street Y, Quiet Lightning, Ninth Letter, Latinas: Struggles & Protests in 21st Century USA, Zócalo Public Square, womenvoicesforchange.org, and GUEST, among others. A Hedgebrook and Community of Writers alumna and CantoMundo fellow, her writing has been influenced by her early experience fleeing Argentina’s 1976 coup, subsequent childhood in Venezuela, and immigration to the United States at the age of nine. In 2020, she read at the 8th Winter Warmer Poetry Festival in Cork, Ireland. Her bilingual poem “Song of Transformation” was featured in the UC Berkeley Arts Research Center’s Fall 2021 Flash Reading Series. Her bilingual collection Ituzaingó: Exiles and Reveries / exilios y ensueños was published in 2021 by Nomadic Press.
