Spanish Poets at the ALDEEU 2018 Congress

Spanish poets Juan Carlos Mestre and María Ángeles Pérez López take part at the 2018 congress of ALDEEU, the Association of Spanish Professionals in America.

The 2018 ALDEU International Congress and Assembly takes place at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, under the theme, Thomas Jefferson and the Hispanic World (1818-2018), with the goal of reexamining the relations of the United States with the Hispanic World from historical or contemporary perspectives, in an interdisciplinary framework.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, said Thomas Jefferson in 1816 defending education and freedom of expression. Thomas Jefferson, founding father of the country and president of the United States (1801-1809), was first and foremost an intellectual, a man of his time who designed and founded the University of Virginia as an educational center where “the dreams of the future” they would come true. In his time, Jefferson defended the Castilian language and had his eyes on the American continent where at that time all the new nations of the continent were about to become independent, re-establishing new relations with Spain.

Juan Carlos Mestre

Juan Carlos Mestre (Villafranca del Bierzo, León, 1957), poet and visual artist, has written Siete poemas escritos junto a la lluvia (1982), La visita de Safo (1983), Antífona del Otoño en el Valle del Bierzo (Adonais Award, 1985), Las páginas del fuego (1987), La poesía ha caído en desgracia (Visor Collection, Jaime Gil de Biedma Award, 1992) and La tumba de Keats (Hiperión Editors, Jaén de Poesía Award, 1999, republished by Calambur with illustrations by the author, 2016). La tumba was written during his stay as a scholar at the Spanish Academy in Rome. His poetry pieces written between 1982 and 2007 have been published in the edited books Las estrellas para quien las trabaja (León, 2007), La poesía no es una misa cantada (edited by Carlos Ordóñez, Lustra Editors, Lima, 2013), La imagen de otro espacio (edited by Manuel Ramos Van Dick, Sarita Carbonera Editors, Perú 2013), Tierra de los significados (edited by Xavier Oquendo, Ecuador, 2014), Historia Natural de la felicidad (edited by Jesús Aguado, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2014). With La casa roja (Calambur, 2008), he received de National Poetry Award in 2009, and the Critics Award with La bicicleta del panadero (Calambur, 2012), both in Spain. In 2018 got the Letter Prize from Castilla y León.

María Ángeles Pérez López

María Ángeles Pérez López (Valladolid, 1967) is a poet and associate professor of Hispanic-American Literature at the University of Salamanca, where she works on contemporary poetry in Spanish. She has been a visiting professor at several European and American universities. Pérez López has published six books of poems and two plaquettes, and has won several literary awards. Anthologies of her work have been published in Caracas, Mexico City, Quito, New York, Monterrey and Bogota. Recently two bilingual anthologies, Algebra dei giorni (Álgebra de los días) in Italy, and Jardin[e]s excedidos in Portugal, have been published. She is a corresponding member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language, the adopted daughter of Fontiveros and member of the Academy of Juglares of Fontiveros, the hometown of San Juan de la Cruz. She has been a member of the jury in several literary prizes, among others, the Cervantes Prize and the Reina Sofía Ibero-American Poetry Prize.

View the full program.