Argentine poet Juan Gelman, born and raised in the Villa Crespo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, was honored yesterday by the Cervantes Institute in Austria.  Gelman was an activist and writer before being exiled from Argentina after the coup in 1976.  He fled to Europe, where he translated and penned many pieces against the government in relative safety.  Last year, he was awarded the Cervantes prize and this year the enormous reference library was named for him.  It contains over 30,000 volumes of spanish literature.  The 80 year old writer described the distinction as “the ultimate honor I have known.”

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Arnaldo Calveyra is an Argentine poet, born in Mansilla, Entre Ríos in 1932, who has lived most of his artistic life in Paris, France.According to the Clarín, Calveyra was once a friend of the great Argentine writer Julio Cortazar, who also lived and wrote for much of his life in France.Now, Calverya is in Argentina once again, participating in a promotion of the first compellation of poems published under the editor Adriana Hidalgo.The book is called “Poesía reunida,” or “Poetry Reunited.”While this may be a retrospective for the poet, he is in no way becoming “traditional” in his views about poetry.Calveyra calls text messages “eminently poetic,” linking conventions like grammar to a government “sick with power.”With such opinions, controversial and strong, he should make for an interesting figure to watch in the years to come.

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