Manuel Díaz Martínez

Manuel Díaz Martínez was born in Santa Clara in 1936. He is a Cuban writer who has become a Spanish citizen and is currently a member of the Real Academia Española.

He cultivates poetry, narrative, and journalistic writing.

He has worked for a long time as a diplomat, having been sent to offer his services in countries such as Bulgaria; he has also been part of the research section of the Instituto de Literatura y Lingüística of the Academia de Ciencias de Cuba.

On the other hand, he has worked as an editor in supplements of the Havana newspaper "Noticias de Hoy" and "La Gaceta de Cuba".

He also collaborates in the dissemination of works by Cuban poets in Spain, being intimately connected to the roots of his homeland.

Currently he resides on the island of Gran Canaria, more precisely in the city of Las Palmas.

Some of his most well-known titles are "Poemas Cubanos del Siglo XX" and "Un caracol en su camino"; the first is an anthology that brings together diverse creations by Cuban poets, the second is also an anthology of all his poetic work.

Manuel Díaz Martínez is one of the most outstanding poets of the Generation of the 50s in Cuba. He belongs to great literature, to a poetry that puts us on the path of the poetry we dream of. Poems in which we find the heartbeat, the emotion that exists between the idea and the word.

He has published fourteen books of poems, in addition to other genres. Only a slight scratch on the flap 2002 (Logroño, AmG. Editor) Poemas Cubanos del Siglo XX, anthology (Madrid, Hiperión 2002). Paso a nivel (Madrid, Editorial Verbum, 2005), poetry. Un caracol en su camino, anthology (Cádiz, Editorial Aduana Vieja, 2005) which gathers much of his poetic work. A selection of his poems was published in 2001, in bilingual Castilian-Italian edition by Bulzoni publisher, from Rome. He has been awarded prizes in Cuba, the Premio Ciudad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and many more. And translated into more than a dozen languages.

Manuel Díaz Martínez is, essentially, an author turned toward irony and melancholy. His own trajectory has driven him to such an extreme. A participant, in his beginnings, in the Cuban Revolution, he suffers, in his own flesh, the disenchantment of that dream. It is necessary to explain background in order to better understand his trajectory: In 1967 he won the National Poetry Prize "Julián del Casal" from the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba with the poetry collection "Vivir es eso" and the jury was composed of: Nicolás Guillén, Eliseo Diego, Gabriel Celaya, José Ángel Valente and Enrique Lihn. The following year he participated as a member of the jury for that same contest where Heberto Padilla won with "Fuera del juego", a text that was denounced for being counterrevolutionary. The unanimous decision of the jury, coupled with the large number of endorsements received as a measure of repudiation in what was called the "Padilla Case", led him to be unable to publish for around five years.

Critics place him among the fundamental figures of what is called the Cuban Generation of the 50s. About Manuel Díaz Martínez, Ángeles Mateo del Pino, professor at ULPGC, "he is one of those authors who write to disturb, stir and move, which are the qualities that, according to him, poetry should have. His constant curiosity, his desire to investigate and his yearning to discover have led him to words to seek in them a form of liberation, a challenge, a magic that allows him to peer into what is abysmal in the everyday life."

In addition to the previously mentioned prize, he has also won the International Poetry Prize Ciudad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (1994) and the Grand International Poetry Prize from the Academia Internacional Oriente-Occidente of Romania (1998) as recognition of his body of work.

He currently lives in Gran Canaria, since 1992.

Works: Frutos dispersos (1956); Soledad y otros temas (1957); El amor como ella (1961); Los caminos (1962); El país de Ofelia (1965); La tierra de Saúd (1966); Vivir es eso (1968); Mientras traza su curva el pez de fuego (1984); Escritos al amanecer (1987); El carro de los mortales (1988); Memorias para el invierno (1995); Paso a nivel (2005); and the anthologies Poesía inconclusa (1985); Alcándara (1991); Concerto Grosso (bilingual Spanish-Italian) (1996) Señales de vida [1968-1998](1998); Antología poética (bilingual Spanish-Italian) (2001); Un caracol en su camino [1965-2002] (2003) and Un caracol en su camino [1965-2005] (2005).