This is the only existing translation into English of an important poet, regarded by Octavio Paz as among the 'finest Latin American writers'. There are more than 20 collections of her poetry in print, all in Spanish. Exchanging Lives contains four sections. The first is of translations from Pizarnik's Arbol de Diana (1962), a book that put Pizarnik, for Octavio Paz, among the 'finest Latin American writers'. The second juxtaposes translations of Pizarnik with poems by Susan Bassnett. These share common concerns as women, but it is a dialogue of difference as Bassnett, fighting for personal writing space from the clamours of work and the 'mothering/wings [that] hold back my writing hand' enters the world of Pizarnik whose work speaks always of social isolation and not belonging. The third section, 'Asia of my imaginings' is a sequence of poems by Bassnett that could not have been written without the experience of translating Pizarnik's daring, subversive work. The fourth brief section condenses the recognitions of identity and difference.

Author Biography

Alejandra Pizarnik was born in Buenos Aires in 1936. Her work is confessional, oblique, dense. Her fantasies were dark, of blood and knives. She wrote of being 'a few steps away from the eternity of silence' and took her own life in 1972. Susan Bassnett is Professor of Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. Her fantasies 'were of secret sexual encounters and having the strength to break through bars'. Her poems have appeared in Babel, Start, Sheaf, Writing Women, Signs, The Literary Review and the Virago Book of Love Poetry. She has published 28 books including Knives and Angels: Women Writers in Latin America, Zed Books, 1990; Feminist Experiences: The Women's Movement in Four Cultures, Unwin Hyman, 1987; Translation Studies, Routledge, 1991