Reconstruction of the Father and Other Writings
by Iris Kiya
Translated by Reina Jara Barrientos
with an introduction by Cayo Cæctus
illustrations by Natalie Aramundiz
and a foreword by Michael Ebmeyer
182 Pages
ISBN-13 : 978-1-953377-01-2
Softcover
$15.95
“The author is out there, waiting in the trench, writing from the trench, hiding in plain sight like a sniper who observes patiently from afar to kill and survive another day.”
– Cayo Cæctus”
“I like to write as a man”, Iris Kiya told me: “I have never written otherwise.” Therefore, in her new work she embarks on a classical territory of the male gaze in literature -the search for the father-, and she does it in a peculiar and subtle way: subversive, for sure, throwing herself freely into the maze of mirrors, but without giving in to the temptation of a simple iconoclasm. In her Reconstruction of the Father, Iris Kiya opens the way to that whirl through a narrator named Milton Steiner, which is one of several male aliases she employs in her writing. The father that this narrator is reconstructing seems to be aware that the illusion of his presence comes at the cost of death.
– Michael Ebmeyer
Using a series of male aliases/heteronyms, Iris Kiya delves into the memory of soldiers at war, children at play and lovers in crisis. Evoking everything that comes into sight, from images of carrousels and photographs by Robert Capa, to the smell of toasted oats and black pepper, Iris Kiya traces the inherent violence of images and their effects on subjects, armed with a rich poetic imagery and a broad palette of affections. She assures us: “My trips are not imaginary, I carry them on the tip of my tongue”.
This dual-language edition, the first of Iris Kiya’s works translated into English, compiles three poetry collections: Reconstruction of the Father (2020), Massacre in Harrington Street (2017) and Infrared Margins (2019). This anthology promises to be a most generous introduction for English speaking audiences to the work of one of the most celebrated Bolivian female poets of the last decade.
Iris Kiya (La Paz, 1990) is one of the most prolific Bolivian poets of her generation. She studied literature at the Higher University of San Andrés (UMSA) and has participated in poetry festivals in Peru, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador and Bolivia. She is an editor, teaches workshops on literary creation and has organized readings and independent book fairs in schools, universities and psychiatric hospitals. Her work has been published in Bolivia and Chile. Her first poetry book was awarded the young poets prize sponsored by the Bolivian Book Committee and the Pablo Neruda Foundation of Chile. She is the author of the poetry collections: Manicom(n)iofra(g)tal, colección postmortem (2010); 24 cortos y un prólogo en braille para Gelinau Laibach (2013), Masacre en la calle Harrington(2017), Márgenes Infrarrojos. L´image, une forme de violence (2019) and the chapbook En la trinchera (2016). Her latest work, Reconstrucción del Padre (2020), has been awarded the national prize from the Bolivian Central Bank.
Reina Jara Barrientos (Lima, 1985), is an Audiovisual Communicator and Translator graduated from the National University of San Marcos (UNMSM). She is dedicated to cultural management with special emphasis on the intersections between art, science and technology; and has worked in the cultural area of the National Library of Peru and as a manager in Alta Tecnologia Andina (ATA). She has participated in the projects: El mañana fue hoy. 21 años de videocreación y arte electrónico en el Perú and Del Cero al Infinito: escritos de arte y lucha, as a coordinator and translator respectively. She is currently a manager of cultural projects at the Espacio Fundación Telefónica Lima.
Cayo Cæctus (Santiago de Chile, 1984). Processor / text / image. Iuspoeta. His work is crossed by the idea of pastiche. He has written a constitution, comics, poetry, essays, and translated without permission from the copyright holder. His latest publication is called El cuerpo es Devil (2019), poetry & reggaeton. His latest collaborative work is called ASCOS (2019), an analog and digital collage book-object. His next comic book publishing project is called Pandemic. He once saw a Hokusai original and is now studying invention patents in CIP A63H 33/38.
Natalie Aramundiz (San Fernando, Chile. 1988) is a Chilean painter and heritage conservationist. She holds a BA from the School of Fine Arts of Valparaíso (EBAV) and is a Conservation and Restoration Technician from the National School of Applied Arts (ENAA). For a decade she has been dedicated to the visual arts in mixed media paintings and experimentation with materials. She has participated in group exhibitions such as the Festival of Erotic Art with the series “Daily Explorations” (2016), and in the collective female exhibition “In the Name of the Father” at the Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center in Villa Alemana (2018). She has been featured in various exhibitions with the students of the School of Fine Arts of Valparaíso, and in 2019 she was selected in the First Biennial of Contemporary Art, “Nunca Fuimos Nada“, at Los 14 gallery in Mexico City.
Michael Ebmeyer (Bonn, 1973) is a German writer, journalist and translator. He grew up in Bielefeld, studied in Tübingen and Barcelona and currently lives in Berlin. After completing his studies, he first worked as a research assistant at the University of Tübingen before he went freelance as a writer. In 2001 he made his debut with the short story book Henry Silber geht zu Ende. Since then he has written the novels Plüsch, Achter Achter, Der Neulingund Landungen, but also non-fiction books such as Gebrauchsanweisung für Katalonien (Instructions for Use of Catalonia, 2007). Since 2015 Michael Ebmeyer has published shorter essays at Freitext on ZEIT Online at irregular intervals. His main topics are laughter, the propaganda strategies of the so called “new right”, the state of the German left, the Catalan independence movement and current political developments in Latin America, especially in Bolivia.
