Poetry Translation Centre

Blanca Varela

Blanca Varela was born in Lima Peru in 1926. Octavio Paz praised her poetry identifying one of her gifts as knowing when to be silent if it is time not to write. It’s true that she has not published prolifically but perhaps this could account for the dense precision of her poems: dense with meanings precise in her choice of words. Varela’s poems often seem to be about the act of writing itself. To me the first of the two poems ‘Secreto de Familia’ explores this. Other aspects of her work which are important are her irony the affinity her poems have with painting and her refusal to see herself as a social poet.

Poems we've translated

• Distant Yet Never So Close
• Family Secret
• I Go Bodiless