FIAT LUX

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Paula Abramo's </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Fiat Lux</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> evokes the poet's ancestors who were political refugees from Italy and Eastern Europe to Brazil and then from Brazil to Bolivia and finally Mexico. At the same time it is a meditation on the act of writing poetry and bringing characters to life with fidelity and imagination. The hinge connecting the two themes is the recurring image of striking a match.  (Abramo's grandmother worked in a match factory in Brazil producing the brand called Fiat Lux Latin for let there be light.) </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Abramo lives and works in Mexico City. When Words Without Borders asked local writer Lucia Duero what writers from here should we read? she selected a single book by a living author: </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Fiat Lux</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> by Paula Abramo a great story about the human journey and courage marvelously captured in the poetics of everyday life. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The language of the poems is whimsical committed sometimes fierce sometimes political and always concerned with words language and languages. Each vignette evokes a moment. Together they are nearly a novel.</span></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>