Biography
Rafael Guillén (1933–2023) was a Spanish poet from Granada, a prominent member of the Generation of '50 and one of the most important authors of his generation. He helped restore Andalusian poetic culture after the devastation of the Spanish Civil War.
His early work shows the neoclassical influence shared by others of his generation, but the pull of popular themes, in Cancionero-guía para andar por el aire de Granada (1962), soon led him away from traditional metre. Moheda (1979) surprised readers with its free and inventive syntax. Love and eroticism in his poems are often mixed with elegy for the passing of time, in verse with a measured, musical phrasing.
He won Spain's National Poetry Award in 1994 for Los estados transparentes. A selection of his poems in English, I'm Speaking, translated by Sandy McKinney, was published by Northwestern University Press in 2001. He also wrote travel books, autobiography and essays. He died in 2023, at the age of 90.