ABOUT THIS BOOK

The first English-language translation of Rosabetty Muñoz’s vital and innovative poetry from across her extraordinary body of work

Rosabetty Muñoz is one of Chile’s most acclaimed and innovative contemporary poets. Her poems highlight the lives of girls and women on the islands of the Chilean archipelago, portraying the hardships they encounter in this often-overlooked region of the world. In this meticulous and compelling translation from Elena Barcia, Nothing Like Paradise offers a collection of selected works from across Muñoz’s oeuvre, offering a close look into the breadth and emotional intensity of her poetry.

These poems depict the wounds inflicted by the Pinochet dictatorship, foreign invasions, sexual exploitation, the incursions of global capitalism, and political exile. Renowned for her powerful use of multiple voices and striking images, Muñoz channels the thoughts and emotions of the islands’ female inhabitants, bringing immediacy and drama to their stories and transforming readers into their witnesses and confidants. Her poems invite us to confront pain and injustice with empathy and to turn understanding into a collective act of compassion and resistance.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

ROSABETTY MUÑOZ is the author of more than a dozen books and anthologies of verse and the recipient of multiple awards, including the Pablo Neruda Prize in 2000 and the Ibero-American Poetry Prize in 2024.

ELENA BARCIA is a literary and film translator born and raised in Los Angeles. Her translations include Miguel de Unamuno’s classic novel Fog, published by Northwestern University Press, poems published in multiple literary journals, and Chilean poet Malú Urriola’s book Exquisite Corpse.

REVIEWS

“From Chile, a land rich in poets, we discover yet another great voice, Rosabetty Muñoz, translated with delicate intensity by Elena Barcia. Nothing Like Paradise leads us from fear to hope, from the horrors of political violence to the beauty of the words themselves.” —Suzanne Jill Levine, author of Unfaithful

“Muñoz’s is the poetry of witness at its most visceral and unflinching: from the hellscape of Chile during and after Pinochet, to the acute suffering of its women and girls under the Church, to the anguish of exile. Her work is superbly illuminated by the translator’s introduction.” —Lise Weil, author of In Search of Pure Lust

“In Elena Barcia’s compelling translation, Nothing Like Paradise gives us a broad perspective of the ethno-cultural concerns driving Muñoz’s poetry over several decades. A defender of Indigenous and feminist rights in Chile and Latin America, Muñoz in her texts gives space to the abused and rejected but also celebrates the quiet splendor of her southern terrain. Her writing is unique and powerful, an important voice for our times.” —Francine Masiello, University of California at Berkeley

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Translator’s Introduction

Detachment

A Stumbling Sheep

Cry of a Sheep Gone Astray

“We were the chosen ones . . .”

“Where did they go? . . . ”

“The sky of this raw winter . . . ”

Voyage

Chacao

Doña Sebastiana I

Lacao

Batachauques

Cheniao

Caguach

You Don’t Raise Children to Watch Them Die

The Women

The Arrival

Conquest

Daily Traces

A Moment of Calm

Devastation

Solidarity

Flight and Fall

Flock

Footprints in the Sand

The Widows’ Neighborhood

The Velvet Saint

They’ve Left Me So Soiled

The Displaced Saint

“The guilt. …”

“Let the rage spill…”

Now a Hurricane Wind

She Is Carrying Newborns

Brothel

Air

Landscape

Stalked

Mundane Pleasure

Vigil

Amorous

(the airplane in flames)

(anguish that drips)

(a plague so severe)

(blue rags wave)

(the known world is torn apart)

(the sharp tooth of the rat)

(bites around the edge of this page)

(it reeks of squalor)

(a time that is dying)

“This one, in the photo . . .”

“When her doll fell into the septic tank . . .”

“I remember the day they came to ask . . . ”

“For weeks she begged . . . ”

“Filling the frame . . . ”

“My mother embroiders . . . ”

“And this one is Bernarda . . . ”

Waters

Sorrowful Mysteries

Trash

Mouth of the River

In the Name of No One

The Source

Flight and Fall

The Daughter’s Shadow

Ignore the Drone

Joyful Mysteries

“The dreaded landing has occurred . . .”

Fish

“(With every swell, . . . )”

“Now, in the summers . . . ”

“This house is losing its people . . .”

“Ah, how we wish to pass . . . ”

“Sorrow becomes rust . . . ”

“The city has a different order now . . . ”

“Eternal damnation to those who vexed paradise . . . ”

“This part of the story is over. Our rituals . . . ”

“In a clearing between some branches . . . ”

“The head of the team put the Virgin . . . ”

“The woman who keeps the keys to the chapel . . . ”

“The team does not believe . . . ”

Colloquy of the Saints

“This part of the story is over. . . . ”

“Once you are exiled . . . ”

“The first was my grandfather . . . ”

“There’s a remote country . . . ”

“It’s mainly the women . . . ”

“Even in a state of shock . . . ”

“The language of the house . . . ”

“I was never a victim . . . ”

“Once again the mountain range . . . ”

“Every night I dream of a mother”

“We would like to grow old . . . ”

“Among those who encouraged us to return . . . ”

“The hostility of the high iron bars . . . ”

“The new country . . . ”

“The return, another heartbreak . . . ”

“The country was full of sensible people . . . ”

“A young man hijacks a truck . . . ”

“Now I search for words . . .”

“The whisper burrows . . .”

“Now we move south . . .”

“Utopia of hydrangeas and swans”.