Abstract
‘The impulse to write a political poem is a gut reaction of rage, frustration, impotence and sorrow’
Claribel Alegría, one of Central America's best-known poets, was born in Estelí, Nicaragua in 1924, but she considers herself Salvadorean because she went to live in El Salvador when she was a year old. She went to the United States in 1943 and earned her BA from George Washington University. While not originally a political exile from El Salvador, her opposition to successive regimes there has meant she cannot safely return. She now lives in Deya, Mallorca with her North American husband, Darwin J. Flakoll. Her books of poetry include Anillo de Silencio, Suite, Vigilias, Acuario, Huesped de mi Tiempo, Vía Unica, Aprendizaje, Pagaré a cobrar y ótros poemas, Raíces, and Sobrevivo. A selected poems, Suma y sigue (antología), appeared from Visor Madrid in 1981, and her translations of North American poets, Nuevas voces de Norte-america, appeared from Plaza & Janes, S.A., the same year. In 1978, Claribel Alegría was awarded the Casa de las Americas Prize in Havana, Cuba. This interview was conducted in Mallorca by the young North American poet Carolyn Forché, author of several collections of verse including The Country Between Us and translator of a collection of Claribel Alegría's poems in English, Flowers from the Volcano (University of Pittsburgh). It first appeared in Poetry East. Two of the accompanying poems are translated by Carolyn Forché. The rest have been published by the El Salvador Solidarity Campaign (London), in a small collection of Claribel Alegría's poems, Poesía Viva.