Riverbed of Memory

Author: Daisy Zamora

Publisher: City Lights (1992)

These are poems written mostly in a time of war, and rooted in the land and people of Nicaragua. Zamora draws deep portraits of women of all classes, often using her own body as a metaphor and starting point. Recalling the years of revolution and resistance to U.S. intervention, she follows the riverbed of her memories through the land of her childhood, mourns the devastation of war, and illuminates the heroic lives of ordinary men and women.

Daisy Zamora was program director of clandestine Radio Sandino during the revolution and later served as vice-minister of Culture in the Sandinista government. Zamora is a prominent figure in contemporary Latin American poetry. Her poems, essays, articles and translations have been published in magazines and literary newspapers throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and Vietnam. Her poems have appeared in more than fifty anthologies written in Spanish, English, French, German, Swedish, Italian, Bulgarian, Russian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Dutch, Flemish, Slovak and Czech. Her work is included in The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry. For the last several years, she has taught poetry workshops at a number of universities and colleges, and most recently as a lecturer for the Latin American & Latino Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has given poetry readings and lectures throughout the world, including many venues in the U.S., and was a featured artist in Bill Moyer’s PBS series “The Language of Life.”