Fayad Jamís: A conversation and poetry translations by Kathleen Weaver

Fayad Jamís (Zacatecas, Mexico, 1930 – Havana, Cuba, 1988) was a Cuban poet, painter, and graphic artist. Winner of the 1962 Casa de las Américas prize in poetry, his publications include: Brújula (Imprenta Wilfredo Rodríguez, 1949), Los párpados y el polvo (Orígenes, 1954), Vagabundo del alba (Ediciones La Tertulia, 1959), Cuatro poemas en China (Coleccion Arún, 1961), Los puentes (Ediciones R, 1962), Por esta libertad (Casa de las Américas, 1962), Cuerpos: selección poética. (Ediciones Unión, 1966), Abrí la verja de hierro (Contemporáneos, 1973), La pedrada: selección poética (1951-1973) (Letras Cubanas, 1981), and Sólo el amor (Ediciones Presente, 1983).   Kathleen Weaver is a writer, translator, and editor based in Berkeley, California. She authored the biography Peruvian Rebel: The World of Magda Portal (Penn State University Press, 2009), which includes translations of poetry by feminist activist Magda Portal. Weaver’s translations include Omar Cabezas’s Fire from the Mountain, with an introduction by Carlos Fuentes (New American Library, 1985), Where the Island Sleeps Like a Wing, Selected Poetry of Nancy Morejón (Black Scholar Press, 1985), and Julio Cortázar’s Nicaraguan Sketches (Norton, 1989). She also co-edited The Penguin Book of Women Poets (Viking, 1978). An interview with Cuban poet and painter Fayad Jamís (1930-1988) accompanied by five of his poems in translation. By Kathleen Weaver. Interview conducted in Mexico City in 1983.  Jamís was born in Mexico of Lebanese-Mexican heritage. A painter as well an acclaimed poet, he is the author of eleven books of poetry and a recipient of the Casa de las Americas prize, 1962. As a young man he traveled to Paris, undocumented, where he painted in an Abstract Expressionist style and wrote poetry for five years. Soon after Cuban Revolution came to power in 1959, he returned to Havana, working as a poet, book designer, graphics artist, and director of publications for the Writers and Artists Union of Cuba. He also edited the cultural supplement for the newspaper Hoy, besides teaching painting in a national art schools. He traveled widely to the USSR and countries of the socialist bloc, as well as to China, Japan, and European countries. His poems were translated into various languages and he himself translated a book-length selection of work by the Hungarian poet Attila József. For over a decade he served as Cuban cultural attaché to Mexico, based in Mexico City, in the 1970s and early ‘80s. Following his untimely death in 1988, his stature as a significant figure in Cuban culture has been secured.