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 Mexico City is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Mexico, largest city of Mexico, as well as the List of North American cities by population, most populous city in North America. It is one of the most important cultural and finan ...

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 ''Milenio'' is a major national newspaper in Mexico, owned by Grupo Multimedios. It is published in 11 cities across Mexico, including Monterrey, Mexico City, Guadalajara, León, Pachuca, Puebla, Villahermosa, Tampico, Torreón, Toluca, an ...

She studied at the

Universidad Iberoamericana The Ibero-American University (), also referred to by its acronym ''UIA'' but commonly known as ''Ibero'' or ''La Ibero'', is a private, Catholic, Mexican higher education institution, sponsored by the Mexican province of the Society of Jesus ( ...

.Gervitz, Gloria
/ref> Gervitz resided in the United States.

Career

Gervitz studied Art History at the

. She has translated works by

Kenneth Rexroth Kenneth Charles Marion Rexroth (December 22, 1905 – June 6, 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. Althoug ...

Susan Howe Susan Howe (born June 10, 1937) is an American poet, scholar, essayist, and critic, who has been closely associated with the Language poets, among other poetry movements.

Lorine Niedecker Lorine Faith Niedecker (English: pronounced Needecker; May 12, 1903 – December 31, 1970) was an American poet. Her poetry is known for its spareness, its focus on the natural landscapes of Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest (particularly waterscape ...

Rita Dove Rita Frances Dove (born August 28, 1952) is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as United States Poet Laureate, Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have bee ...

, and

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...

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 List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...

, ''Cántico'' by

Jorge Guillén Jorge Guillén Álvarez (; 18 January 18936 February 1984) was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27, a university teacher, a scholar and a literary critic. In 1957-1958, he delivered the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard U ...

, 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, writer and diplomat, awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the soaring flight and the ev ...

. 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 Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

, ''Migraciones'' contains phrases and words in

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

Awards

In 2011, she received the PEN Mexico Prize for Literary Excellence. In 2019, Gervitz received the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award, 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 (), formerly known as (), is a daily newspaper published in Santiago, Chile and owned by Copesa. It is s closest competitor. is part of Periódicos Asociados Latinoamericanos ( Latin American Newspaper Association), an organization of fourte ...

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 Mexican 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