The Belly of the Whale
The Bilingual Edition

Claudia Prado (Author), Rebecca Gayle Howell (Translated by)

9781682832059

Hardback, published 15 March 2024

108 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.272 kg

“Irony and memory, innocence and parody. In her impeccable, subtle poetry, Claudia Prado sings of an ineffable world— just as her grandmother does—from a gallery that forever looks upon the sea.” —Cristian Aliaga, Music for Unknown Journeys: New & Selected Prose Poems (traducción de/trans. Ben Bollig)

“Every genealogy has its poet: in El interior de la ballena|The belly of the whale, Claudia Prado recovers a century-long family story through detail. Here the past is resurrected by new music.” —Laura Wittner, Lugares donde una no está —Poemas 1996–2016

“El interior de la ballena|The belly of the whale is brilliant. Claudia Prado has given us poetry capable of holding the stories of a family’s generations and the silences of legacy. These are poems that breathe into the dualities lived by those who are born to two cultures and two languages. In Rebecca Gayle Howell’s masterful English version, these dualities resurrect—giving us a perennial migration of translation. I am deeply touched.” —Luis Alberto Ambroggio, North American Academy of Spanish Language & The Royal Spanish Academy<

“Praise to Claudia Prado and Rebecca Gayle Howell for this rigorous collaboration between two poets and two translators. El interior de la ballena|The belly of the whale is a documentation, an exposition of the hard work of carrying across family stories of the immigrants' struggle—their labor, their love, their loss, their endless journeying—through the vast desert of the south, the Patagonian Plateau, so much like the great migration across the plains in the north. These shimmering poems of the Americas reverberate distinct music in both Spanish and English, demonstrating for us the care and diligence these writers have given to the cherished voices of the past that continue to echo in us today.” —Curtis Bauer, American Selfie (trans. Natalia Carabajosa)

“These poems by Claudia Prado move me just as they did twenty-five years ago. A century of family stories sleeping inside the whale, set in the Patagonian Madryn where Prado once showed me her whales, immense and sweet as her beautiful poems.” —Diana Bellessi, Tener lo que se tiene

“El interior de la ballena|The belly of the whale is as startling, transportative, and rich as the experience of peering at photos through a stereoscope. Claudia Prado has written a book of stark, exacting beauty, laced with stories of migration, loss, labor, the struggles and transformations of women over time, a formidable landscape and the mysterious bonds it invites and imposes on its inhabitants. Rebecca Gayle Howell’s translations are whittled, gleaming, confident, utterly alive. In both Spanish and English, these poems not only bring intimate histories ‘to life’ but also change something in the eyes that do the looking, the living.” —Robin Myers (trans.), The Law of Conservation by Mariana Spada

“Fully bilingual, El interior de la ballena|The belly of the whale follows one family’s migratory journey through Patagonia in an empowered examination and celebration of ancestry. Poet Claudia Prado has reimagined tales passed down for generations, spotlighting the silent endurance and pivotal roles of women, while Rebecca Gayle Howell’s translations remind us now more than ever that differences ‘require us to need each other.’ I was so mesmerized that I read the book in one sitting.” —Ruben Quesada, ed., Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry

In this South American epic, poet Claudia Prado imagines her ancestors' nineteenth-century migration from the Basque Country into Argentina and, ultimately, southward into the oceanic desert. At its original publication in 2000, El interior de la ballena received Argentina's National Fund for the Arts prize, helping usher in a poetics of Patagonia.