Cuban poet Víctor Rodríguez Núñez wins the 29th Manuel Alcántara Poetry Prize of Málaga

July 29, 2021

Cuban poet Víctor Rodríguez Núñez wins the 29th Manuel Alcántara Poetry Prize in Málaga

The Cuban journalist, professor, poet and translator residing in the United States has won the twenty-ninth edition of the Manuel Alcántara Poetry Prize for the poem 'Siete preposiciones de lugar', according to the ruling of the jury for this award, presided over by Álvaro García, and also composed of José Infante, Rafael Muñoz Zayas, Rosa Romojaro and María José Jiménez Tomé. The ruling was announced this Tuesday by Noelia Losada, councilwoman of the City of Málaga; Francisco Cañadas, head of Publications and Prizes at the Unicaja Foundation; Antonio Pedraza, president of the Alcántara Foundation; and Álvaro García, president of the jury.

The winning poem was selected from 282 works submitted from different Spanish-speaking areas, fundamentally.

In reference to the winning work, the jury president and also writer, Álvaro García, noted that Rodríguez presents 'with images arranged in groundbreaking planes, and follows the simultaneist tradition and luminously fuses the epic and the lyrical'.

A Doctor in Hispanic Literatures from the University of Texas and professor of this specialty at Kenyon College, Víctor Rodríguez is recognized for his poetry collections 'Camaya' (1979) and 'Los poemas de nadie y otros poemas' (1994).

He considers it a sin to classify poetry as a literary genre. 'It is prior to literature, and basically a poem is something oral', he reflected recently.

Cuban poet Víctor Rodríguez Núñez wins the 29th Manuel Alcántara Poetry Prize in Málaga

Víctor has translated poetry both from English to Spanish (Mark Strand, C. D. Wright, John Kinsella) and from Spanish to English (Juan Gelman, José Emilio Pacheco, Antonio Gamoneda). A Doctor in Hispanic Literatures from the University of Texas at Austin, he is a professor of this specialty at Kenyon College, United States.

Cuban poet Víctor Rodríguez Núñez wins the 29th Manuel Alcántara Poetry Prize in Málaga

The Manuel Alcántara Poetry Prize is an award endowed with 6,000 euros. The competition is organized by the City of Málaga, with the sponsorship of the Unicaja Foundation and the collaboration of the Manuel Alcántara Foundation.