Handbook of Foams by Gerardo Diego

Reading and discussion with poet & translator Francisco Aragón and poets Leo Boix, Marina Sánchez and Soledad Santana

A valuable contribution to the study of Spain’s Generation of ’27

Join us for an engaging literary event dedicated to Handbook of Foams, one of the most innovative and evocative works by Spanish poet Gerardo Diego. This special session will feature poet and translator Francisco Aragón, who is a professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies in the United States. He will joined by British Latinx poets Leo Boix, Marina Sánchez, and Soledad Santana, whose work bridge languages and cultural traditions.

Together, they will offer a constellation of voices through the prism of Gerardo Diego’s image-rich musicality and experimental spirit that define his creationist collection, Handbook of Foams, shedding light on its place within the Generation of ’27 and its ongoing relevance today. Through conversation, close readings, and poetic reflection, the speakers will invite audiences to rediscover Diego’s work from both critical and creative perspectives.

The event will include readings, discussion, and an opportunity for audience questions, offering a unique encounter between scholarship and poetic practice.

This event is made possible, in part, by support from the Franco Institute for the Liberal Arts and the Public Good, College of Arts & Letters and the ND Arts Initiative at the University of Notre Dame.

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"Francisco Aragón’s translation of Gerardo Diego’s musical and sea-misted Handbook of Foams makes a valuable contribution to the study of Spain’s Generation of ’27 by expanding our understanding of its aesthetics and alliances beyond its most celebrated member, Federico García Lorca. With his introduction, Aragón usefully maps Diego’s early poetic engagements to demonstrate the impact of Latin American poets, namely that of the Chilean Vicente Huidobro, on Handbook of Foams and, more generally, Spanish and European avant-garde poetry."

—Rosa Alcalá


““Lemons and planets, crickets and trains, kites and stars, consumptives and suicides; seaside panorama that “never waxes or wanes,” but where the “wind awaits the hospital’s opening hour.” Both the structure of avant-garde feeling and the technique of composition that Gerardo Diego brought to his Handbook of Foams transfigure the plastic worldliness of bodies, things, and surroundings into a recital of the otherworldly, into stage lighting and sound effects that encompass at once “a corner of the countryside” and the crime scenes of modern life. Translator-poet Francisco Aragón has finely rendered into English the image principle unique to creacionista causation and Diego’s particular recital of its ebb and flow."

—Roberto Tejada

Event in English.

More information:

Handbook of Foams - FRANCISCO ARAGON

Biografía español. Gerardo Diego, poeta español. Biblioteca español. Instituto Cervantes