The first English translation of one of the most pivotal collections in contemporary Galician poetry, Whales and Whales navigates the urgent, playful, shapeshifting journey of a young woman affirming her place in the world. Caught between a father toiling far away in the icy waters of the Atlantic, and a mother who works in a canning factory, Luisa Castro's 'daughter of the sea' casts her voice from her home on the North Galician coast. Throwing the romantic clich s of love, labour, girlhood and rural living overboard, Castro's subtle sleight-of-hand - fluidly sung into English by Keith Payne - brings the innocent, irreverent desires of her emboldened protagonist to life. Disarmingly vulnerable and intensely liberating, these poems reveal the dreams and awakenings of a young girl becoming a woman in a society yet to learn how to accommodate her.
Praise for Whales and Whales
"Whales and Whales surges in from the sea, trembling poetry; an erratic wave, a magnificent and disturbing inner storm." - Manuel Rivas
Related Subjects
Poetry