This special edition of El libro de Gloria Fuertes. Antología de poemas y vida finally brings together in a single volume the work and biography of one of the most unique voices of twentieth-century Spanish poetry, whose career was first overshadowed for being a woman, then for her class background, and lastly by the label of “poet for children” that eclipsed the power of her writing.
It is presented as a limited edition in cloth hardcover, with painted edges, and a fully colored interior. In its 448 pages, more than 300 poems by Gloria Fuertes are gathered, several of them unpublished, along with nearly 80 never-before-published photographs, 12 original drawings, press clippings, pages from her notebooks, invitations to readings, and other archival materials from her home in Madrid. The result is both a book of poems and a life album.
Besides the poetic anthology, the volume includes what is considered the most complete Gloria Fuertes biography to date, authored by Jorge de Cascante, as well as 25 anecdotes scattered throughout the book that reconstruct meetings and disagreements with editors, friends, loves, and readers. The collection closes with a 16-page comic, created by Carmen Segovia, which narrates an episode from Fuertes’s time as a university professor in the United States.
It is, ultimately, a complete portrait of Gloria Fuertes: the poet who insisted on being called poet and not poetess, the author who wrote for girls and boys without ceasing to be radically grown-up, and the popular figure who is finally beginning to take the place she deserves within contemporary poetry in Spanish.
