Isabel Bermúdez Ospina y Richard Gwyn in conversation
Isabel Bermudez’ poetry reflects on the ambiguities and challenges of a dual identity. Writing in English, Bermudez is well placed to act as a conduit between the culture and poetical heritage of Colombia and her adopted country. Isabel will read from her most recent selection of poems, Serenade (2020) and from Extranjeros (2015), leading into a discussion of the wider themes and concerns of recent Colombian poetry, in works by Darío Jaramillo, Piedad Bonnett, Raúl Gómez Jattin and Rómulo Bustos Aguirre. What – if any – are the common links that drive the poetry of such writers? What are the points of intersection between poetry and the wider literary culture of Colombia? How pervasive is the presence of the colonial past in Colombian poetry, and in what ways has that heritage been challenged? Isabel Bermudez will be joined in discussion on these topics and more by Richard Gwyn, Professor of Creative and Critical Writing at Cardiff University and translator of The Other Tiger: Recent Poetry from Latin America (2016) and Impossible Loves (2019).
Isabel Bermudez Ospina was born in Bogotá but arrived in the UK when she was just three years old. She studied Modern Languages at King’s College, Cambridge and production and direction of documentaries at Salford University. She has worked in television in the UK, Sri Lanka and Colombia; her documentary ‘El corazon de la basura’ was selected and screened at the Cuban International Film Festival and the Cartagena Film Festival. Before turning to poetry, she undertook a wide variety of jobs such as grape picker in the South of France, receptionist, Special Correspondent for the Island Newspaper in Colombo, Sri Lanka, director/producer at Citytv Bogotá and teacher in secondary schools. She has published five collections of poems: Extranjeros (Flarestack Poets, Birmingham, 2015), Small Disturbances (Rockingham Press, Ware, 2016), Sanctuary (Rockingham Press, Ware, 2018), Madonna Moon (Coast to Coast, Liverpool, 2019) y Serenade, con ilustraciones de Simon Turvey (Paekakariki Press, Walthamstowe, 2020).
Richard Gwyn is a Welsh poet, novelist and translator. His memoir, The Vagabond’s Breakfast, which won the Wales Book of the Year Award for nonfiction in 2012 chronicles a decade of vagabondage around the Mediterranean in the 1980s. It was published by Bajolaluna in Argentina, by LOM in Chile, and by Pre-Textos in Spain as El desayuno del vagabundo. In 2013 a selection of his poetry, Abrir una caja, was published by Gog y Magog, Buenos Aires (2013) followed by Ciudades y recuerdos by Trilce, Mexico, in 2016, both translated by Jorge Fondebrider. 2016 also saw the publication in the UK of The Other Tiger: Recent Poetry from Latin America (Seren), the culmination of five years of travel and research. His translation of the selected poems of Darío Jaramillo, Impossible Loves (Carcanet) was shortlisted for the Premio Valle-Inclán in 2020. His most recent novel is The Blue Tent (Parthian, 2019). Richard Gwyn writes a blog under the alias of Ricardo Blanco
