STEVE JOHNSON recommends a beautiful album of songs that celebrate summer, from May Day onwards
The year 2024 has proven remarkable for Latinx and Latin American fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, featuring an extensive range of literary works that have exceeded all expectations.
Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, edited by Rigoberto Gonzalez (Library of America, £30), is the first to encompass Latinx poetry from colonial to contemporary works. Featuring over 180 poets and an insightful introduction by Gonzalez, this collection showcases diverse voices, themes, languages, and stories. “‘Latino’ is a complex term with no single narrative. This anthology transcends stereotypes, reflecting the richness of Latino poetry,” writes Gonzalez. Highlights include poems by Ernesto Cardenal, Cecilia Vicuna, and Javier Zamora. In Zamora's poignant El Salvador, he expresses: “Tonight, how I wish/ you made it easier to love you, Salvador. Make it easier/ to never have to risk our lives.”
An exceptional anthology.
Do frozen colonists carry the virus of empire? Why is monstrosity a great way to describe capital? Was God a dustman?
Looking for moral co-ordinates after a tough year for rational political thinking and shared human morality
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin
ANDY CROFT rallies poets to the impossible task of speaking truth to a tin-eared politician


