Carilda Oliver Labra (6 July 1922 – 29 August 2018) was a Cuban poet. She was born in
Matanzas
Matanzas (Cuban ) is the capital of the Cuban province of Matanzas. Known for its poets, culture, and Afro-Cuban folklore, it is located on the northern shore of the island of Cuba, on the Bay of Matanzas (Spanish ''Bahia de Matanzas''), east ...
and died there as well.
Oliver Labra studied law at the
University of Havana.
[ She was also known to excel at drawing, painting and sculpting.][ ''Me desordeno, amor, me desordeno'' might be her most famous poem. Other works such as ''Discurso de Eva'' ("Eve's Discourse") also show a profound literary technique.
Her debut collection in 1943, Lyric Prelude (Preludio lirico) immediately established her as an important poetic voice. At the South of My Throat made her famous: the coveted National Prize for poetry came to her in 1950 as a result of the popular and notorious book, At the South of My Throat (Al sur de mi garganta) 1949. In honor of the tri-centennial of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in a contest sponsored by The Latin American Society in Washington D.C., in 1950, she had also received the national Cuban First Prize for her poems. Her work was highly praised by Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean poet and first Latin American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945. In 1958, Oliver Labra published Feverish memory (Memoria de la fiebre) which added to her notoriety as a blatantly erotic woman. The book concerned a theme which has dominated her poetry—lost love, as it was written after the untimely death of her second husband.
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oliver Labra, Carilda
1922 births
2018 deaths
Cuban poets
Cuban women poets
20th-century Cuban poets
20th-century Cuban women writers
21st-century Cuban poets
21st-century Cuban women writers
People from Matanzas
University of Havana alumni