Jacques Viau Renaud Selections from Permanence of the Cry
Jacques Viau Renaud Selections from Permanence of the Cry
$10.00
Editor: Ariel Francisco
49 pp, softcover, saddle-stitch binding
ISBN: 978-1-7339317-9-3
The poetry and life of Jacques Viau Renaud has been relegated to the margins of history for too long. His revolutionary voice doesn’t just speak for Haiti and the Dominican Republic, not just for the Caribbean or even the America’s, but in concert with oppressed people around the planet. While this publication is the first time his poems have been gathered in an English language collection, it is by no means complete, and invites readers to delve deeper into the poetry and the life of this revolutionary figure. Viau was born in Port-au-Prince in 1942, immigrated to the Dominican Republic at eight years old, and was killed by the occupying American forces during the Dominican Republic’s April Revolution in 1965 when he was only twenty-three years old. The words he left behind are a testament to his revolutionary spirit along with his tremendous talent as a poet. His name belongs alongside his peers and poet-revolutionaries of the 20th century; Roque Dalton of El Salvador, Otto Rene Castillo of Guatemala, and Daisy Zamora of Nicaragua. The list goes on…
Author’s Biography:
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1942, the poet Jacques Viau Renaud immigrated with his family to the Dominican Republic in 1948. As a young man he formed a vibrant part of the burgeoning Generación del Sesenta (Generation of the Sixties), a group of writers and artists deeply committed to solidarity between the Haitian and Dominican people. The group also found kinship in anticolonial figures and internationalists such as the Haitians Jean-Price Mars and Jacques Stephen Alexis, as well as the celebrated Martinicans Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon. Taking up arms against the imperialist US invasion in 1965, Renaud was killed in action, at the young age of 23. The truncated but powerful body of work he left behind is a testament to his humanitarian and revolutionary spirit, as well as his tremendous talent as a poet, and his name belongs alongside his peers, poet-revolutionaries of the 20th century such as Roque Dalton of El Salvador, Otto Rene Castillo of Guatemala, Daisy Zamora of Nicaragua, and many others.
Editor
Ariel Francisco
Ariel Francisco is the author of the forthcoming All the Places We Love Have Been Left in Ruins
(Burrow Press, 2024), Under Capitalism If Your Head Aches They Just Yank Off Your Head
(Flowersong Press, 2022), and A Sinking Ship is Still a Ship (Burrow Press, 2020), and the translator of Haitian-Dominican poet Jacques Viau Renaud’s Poet of One Island (Get Fresh Books, 2024) and Guatemalan poet Hael Lopez’s Routines/Goodbyes
(Spuyten Duyvil, 2022). A poet and translator born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents and raised in Miami, his work has been published in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets, POETRY Magazine, The New York City Ballet, Latino Book Review, and elsewhere. He is Assistant Professor of Poetry and Hispanic Studies at Louisiana State University.
