The Department of Romance Languages Books in Print Series Presents: Jesús Sepúlveda, Espejo de los detalles [Mirror of Details] (El Sur es América/Calabaza, 2020). Dr. Sepúlveda will give a brief presentation of and reading from his book, followed by a Q&A session.

Espejo de los detalles [Mirror of Details] is the latest poetry collection of Chilean-American poet Jesús Sepúlveda. Divided in four parts, the collection is configured around themes recurrent in Sepúlveda’s poetry: a past marked by the Chilean dictatorship and political repression; the crisis of civilization and ecological urgency; psychonautic exploration through ayahuasca ceremonies; and the sensorial emancipation of the body. This book is also the exploratory journey of an anarchic and rebellious subjectivity that goes from urban experience, represented by iconic cities like New York and Paris, toward the Amazon jungle. It is, indeed, a voyage of liberation that ends with the eyes of the ego gazing upon its own delusion. Espejo de los detalles /Mirror of Details was published simultaneously in 2020 in a bilingual edition translated by Elmira Louie and illustrated by painter Ivo Vergara Lasnibat (aka Ivotopia) by El Sur es América in Virginia, and in Spanish by Calabaza del diablo in Chile.

Jesús Sepúlveda is the author of ten poetry collections and three books of essays, including his green anarchist manifesto The Garden of Peculiarities (2002) and his book on Latin American poetry Poets on the Edge (2016).  His poems were collected in Poemas de un bárbaro in 2013 and his collection Hotel Marconi (1998) was made into a film in 2009. Sepúlveda’s work has been translated from Spanish into twelve languages and published in more than twenty countries, leading him to participate in many poetry festivals and readings throughout the world. The Sylt Foundation sponsored him to be a writer-in-residence in South Africa in 2016 and Germany in 2018.  In 2019 the Instituto de Cultura Oregoniana awarded him first place in the state of Oregon’s second Spanish poetry contest. His other collections include Lugar de origen (Santiago, 1987), Correo negro (Buenos Aires, 2001), Escrivania (Mexico, 2003), Antiegótico (Viña del Mar, 2013), Secoya (New York, 2015), and Wirikuta (Puerto Rico, 2019). Espejo de los detalles [Mirror of Details] is his latest collection published simultaneously in the US and Chile in 2020. Sepúlveda holds a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and teaches at the University of Oregon.  His work can be read at poetajesussepulveda.com