Product details
- ISBN 9781803096704
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 127 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 05 Aug 2026
- Publisher: Seagull Books London Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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A translated collection from one of the defining poetic voices in Cuban and Mexican literature.
Old Music Island is a sensuous, dreamlike poetry collection by Odette Alonso, a leading voice in contemporary Cuban and Mexican literature. Born in Santiago de Cuba and living in Mexico since 1992, Alonso is an award-winning poet whose work transforms exile, desire, and memory into sites of lyrical and emotional intensity.
These poems move to the rhythm of nostalgia and smoke. The collection begins with a dream of light and song. The intimate encounter, always an island, is surrounded by the sea experience, and an exchange of glances is but a threshold into the vast expanse. Then comes fear, the fuss of hands, brackish tongue, a conflagration. Only those daring to enter will learn the patterns of the tide and the arrhythmia of the heart. The collection is a somatic encounter of tastes, touch, comings and goings, surprise, and seduction.
Translated by Liz Rose, whose work bridges lyric practice, trans theory, and feminist thought, Old Music Island offers an English-language rendering that honors the book’s lush musicality and charged physical presence. This is poetry of fleeting contact and lasting imprint—an invitation to listen closely, and to cross the threshold.
Odette Alonso was born in Santiago de Cuba and has lived in Mexico since 1992. In addition to writing a novel and two short story collections, she has published twenty poetry collections, receiving numerous prizes in the genre. Alonso is currently coordinator for the Bulevar Arcoíris, a cultural project that promotes gender-dissident art and literature. Liz Rose lives and writes on the occupied ancestral lands of the Tohono O’odham Nation and the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. They translate from Spanish and Portuguese and are the author of Trans Temporalities: Contemporary Experiments Beyond Racialized Gender.
