IN THIS COLLECTION OF POEMS, the reader will find the watermarks of a real, imaginary and fantastic city that beats beneath the sidewalks, in the sun, in the wind that knocks the trees down, in the reflection of the light in the puddles after the rain.
Iliana Rodríguez knows how to delineate with words the solicitations, the elusive messages that draws in the streets the night "of long avenues / as expectations"; the trees, whose "mineral blood drags / the dark secrets"; the wind, which destroys and transforms; and even the inhabitants of the city, who turn into figures in her poems, into ink signs of a dance sometimes luminous and sometimes dark: "Maybe you're a shadow. / A pencil stroke / blotted out by the winds."
The poet writes: "I would like to decipher / the ideogram of my palm: / the sign that defines. / Then I watch my hand / tracing / these words / with its brush." Her hand thus becomes a brush, and her fingers form a drawing in the poems of Trace in which we recognize ourselves.
Iliana Rodríguez, a growing voice in the poetry of Mexico, makes the signs of the city and the world turn around in her threshold of water and light, in these poems.
About the Author: Iliana Rodríguez Zuleta (Mexico City, May 30th, 1969) received a diploma in Creative Writing from the School of Writers of the General Society of Writers of Mexico, Seventh Generation. She has a PhD from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
She has published the following poetry books: Claroscuro (Mexico, Mixcóatl, 1995), Efigie de fuego (Toluca, Mexico State Cultural Institute, 2003), Embosque (Mexico, Autonomous University of Mexico City, 2013) and Lapidario (Mexico, Fósforo-Secretariat of Public Education-National Institute of Fine Arts-National Council for Culture and Arts, 2013).
Her poems have been collected in the following anthologies and collective books: Anuario de poesía 1990, Periferia de Eros, Poesía en la Facultad, Las caras del amor, Poesía de raíces mágicas, Mujeres poetas en el País de las Nubes, Conjuro de luces, Espacios urbanos 2009, Changos y poetas, La semilla desnuda, Sueños al viento, Dondepalabra, Cinco siglos de poesía femenina en México, Caracoles extraviados, Estampida de poemínimos uacemitas and De Neza York a Nueva York.
Additionally, her poems have been included in the 2015, 2016 and 2017 Agendas of the Poets of the World organization, and in the digital anthologies Del silencio hacia la luz, Antología virtual contra la violencia and Escritores y artistas de Latinoamérica por Ayotzinapa.
She participated, with poems in prose, in the book of visual arts, Identidad sin género, a project financed by a grant from the Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation of Mexico City.
She was one of the founders of the Revista Electrónica de Literatura Mexicana (Relim), which in 2000 was recognized by the iBest award as one of the ten best art and culture websites in Mexico. For more than ten years she has collaborated in the Suplemento Cultural y Literario of the newspaper Unión (informational organ of the Union of Workers of the National Autonomous University of Mexico).
She has published poems, articles and reviews in the following newspapers and magazines: Punto, El Nacional, La Jornada, Plural, Mar de tinta, Cultura Urbana and Dosfilos.
She has given workshops on poetry for the diploma of the Center for Literary Creation Xavier Villaurrutia of the National Institute of Fine Arts.
