Keywords: Poetry, International Poetry, Everyday Existence, Commonplace, Extraordinary Life.
DOMESTIC LIFE
◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆
Marcelo Rioseco
English-Spanish
Foreword by Micaela Paredes Barraza
Translated by Arthur Malcolm Dixon
2025
Hardcover | 250 pages | 5.5 x 8.5 inches
Paperback | 248 pages | 5.5 x 8.5 inches
because poetry is also
for those who can’t go on,
those who give up, who don’t conform,
who see things shine
behind the dirty glass of consciousness
and still persist against all indications.
—Marcelo Rioseco
In Domestic Life, written from the commonplace and recondite landscapes of his (extra)ordinary life in America—once the continent but now the country of Rioseco’s linguistic universe—he lays down and ferments, for the first time in his poetry, the crumbs of time: its everyday passage, its occasional apparent standstills. The voice and the poetic gaze pause over and capture the subcutaneous pulse of seemingly lifeless, insignificant moments of everyday existence: the never-ending wait on a backed-up highway or in the supermarket parking lot, yet another late night in front of the TV, the spontaneous conversation with the hairdresser or the mailman.
—Micaela Paredes Barraza
MARCELO RIOSECO (Chile, 1967) In 1994, his book Ludovicos o la aristocracia del universo (Editorial Universitaria, 1995) won the “Revista de Libros” Poetry Prize, awarded by the newspaper El Mercurio in Santiago de Chile. Over the course of his literary career, he has published the poetry books Espejo de enemigos (Uqbar Editores, 2010), 2323 Stratford Ave. (Uqbar Editores, 2012), and La vida doméstica (Editorial Cuarto Propio, 2016), the latter of which received the “Premio Academia,” awarded by the Academia Chilena de la Lengua to the best book of the year. His poetry book Olivia en los suburbios (2020) was published in Spain by Valparaíso Ediciones. In 2024, Chilean press Cuarto Propio published his book Midori & 18-O and Venezuelan press La Castalia published an anthology of his poems titled Poesía Selecta.