Abigael

People in the know know Abigael Bohórquez. He has a kind of cult status in Northern Mexico and in sexually subversive communities across Mexico. His poetry is well known (among a select group) for its refusal to accept the status quo, its rebellion in content and form.

The poetry of Abigael Bohórquez (1936 - 1995) leaps across traditional boundaries in Latin American literature: both colloquial and neo-baroque, regional and informed by classical traditions, intimately personal and actively political, traditionally-informed and experimental. Despite this richness, his work has been marginalized even within Mexico because it challenges historical hierarchies: particularly, a centralist tendency within Mexican literature which privileges literature from the capital and an aesthetic hegemony which makes little room for the work of an openly gay man.

In the last ten years, there has been something of a renaissance in interest in the work of Bohórquez. A number of presses in Sonora have republished his works. In 2000 a consortium of Sonora publishing houses released an anthology of his work called Heredad (Inheritance); this anthology has since been re-released in two subsequent editions.

Check out a new translation of a poem, "Primera ceremonia"/"First Ceremony," by Bohórquez here in the most recent edition of Asymptote, an exciting new international journal focusing on translation.