Voices from the Center of the World

"In Voices from the Center of the World, Randall has assembled a constellation of 25 poets born in Ecuador between 1926 and 1993. Original poems in Spanish and Kichwa are presented with accompanying English translations by Randall. The sampling begins with avant-garde pioneer Jorgenrique Adoum (1926-2009), whose writings were at the front lines of a modernist formation that included such poets as Câesar Dâavila Andrade (1918-1967, who lived and worked largely in Caracas, Venezuela), and painters Oswaldo Guayasamin and Camilo Egas (who lived in New York and taught at the New School for Social Research). Emerging from a regard for how newness enters the world is the exciting work of women authors born between 1950 and 1958-Sara Vanegas (1950), Catalina Sojos (1951), Maritza Cino Alvear (1957), Carmen Vâascones (1958)-and of more recent poets Julia Erazo (1972) and Carlos Vallejo (1973). Writing in the Kichwa language, Ariruma Kowii (1961) and Lucila Lema (1974) serve as custodians of indigenous knowledge and imaginations, at once political, historical, and ancestral. Randall relates that in contemporary Ecuador, especially in the region around Esmeraldas, photographers, artists, choreographers, and poets, including Antonio Preciado (1941), have been preserving and honoring the legacies of slavery and the contribution of Afro-Ecuadorians to contemporary culture"--