The Most Beautiful Cemetery in Chile

Author: Christian Formoso

Translators: Terry Hermsen and Sydney Tammarine

Publisher: Green Fish Press (2015)

Centered in a single locale—the Strait of Magellan in Tierra del Fuego—The Most Beautiful Cemetery in Chile poetically evokes ancient myths, the journey of the conquistadors, the struggle for survival in what Sarmiento de Gamboa somehow convinced himself (and the king of Spain) would be a fruitful paradise. From 300 ships and 3000 soldiers and potential soldiers, Sarmiento finally landed on the shores of the Strait with three ships and a little over 100 of his people remaining. Formoso starts with these ancient stories and deftly weaves them, via intense, ground-breaking language, forward through time and into our contemporary psyche. If we want to know "where we are now" in this 500-year-old history, not just from a scholar's viewpoint but through the perspective and vision of a compelling new voice of Latin American poetry, this book needs to be available to a wide range of English-language readers.