Jewels in the Mud

Small Stations Press is extraordinarily privileged to publish a selection of Cork-based Galician poet Martín Veiga’s poetry from the last thirty years in a bilingual Galician-English edition, Alfaias na lama: Poesía selecta 1990-2020 / Jewels in the Mud: Selected Poems 1990-2020. The poems are selected and introduced by fellow Galician poet Xosé María Álvarez Cáccamo while the translation is by contemporary Irish poet Keith Payne, which means the reader holds in their hands the collaborative work of three poets at the height of their powers. In these forty-five poems, Veiga takes us from the Atlantic coast of his childhood in Noia to Cork in Ireland, where he has been living for more than twenty years. This move away from his native shores has led him, through marriage and fatherhood, to a greater serenity and depth of vision that will delight and move, inspire and surprise, in equal measure. This is the journey we are all required to make – from the chimera of the self we ourselves have shakily constructed to the substantial self that can only be the gift of another. Martín Veiga is Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at University College Cork and has published six poetry collections to date. His fifth collection, Diary of Crosses Green, is available in English from Francis Boutle Publishers. Xosé María Álvarez Cáccamo has written more than twenty collections of poetry, as well as plays, stories and children’s literature. His work has received prestigious literary awards. Keith Payne is one of the foremost translators of Galician poetry into English. His translations include the anthology Six Galician Poets for Arc Publications, The Desert by María do Cebreiro and Second Tongue by Yolanda Castaño.