Jeannette L. Clariond with Forrest Gander

City Lights and Princeton University Press celebrate the publication of

Even Time Bleeds: Selected Poems

By Jeannette L. Clariond

Translated by Forrest Gander

Published by Princeton University Press

A vibrant and compelling bilingual edition of poems by the acclaimed Mexican writer Jeanette Clariond, translated by Pulitzer Prize–winner Forrest Gander

Even Time Bleeds is a revelatory selection of the work of Jeannette Clariond, a major contemporary Mexican poet known for her sensuous lyricism and philosophical gravity. Translated and introduced by Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Forrest Gander, this volume gathers poems from across Clariond’s career and presents the English translations and the original Spanish texts on facing pages. Whether writing about science or Romanticism, childhood or the Chihuahua Desert, ancient Mexican myths or the pandemic of Mexican femicides, Clariond displays a complex self-consciousness that captures much about contemporary identity in Mexico and beyond. Born in 1949 into a Lebanese family that emigrated to Mexico, Clariond has spent much of her life traveling between Mexico, the United States, and Spain, and she writes about varieties of exile and the fearsome complexity of the US–Mexican border with rare insight. Even rarer: she gives voice to her own interiority in a way that is accessible and piercing, as though her true country is inside of each reader.

Jeannette L. Clariond is a poet, translator, and founder the book press Vaso Roto Editions in Spain and Mexico. Along with the Gonzalo Rojas National Poetry Prize, Clariond has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship; the Arts Award from the University of Nuevo León; the Efraín Huerta National Poetry Prize; and the Pilar Fernández Labrador International Poetry Prize of Salamanca, among others prizes. Whether writing about science or Romanticism, childhood or the Chihuahua Desert, ancient Mexican myths or the pandemic of Mexican femicides, Clariond displays a complex self-consciousness that captures much about contemporary identity in Mexico and beyond. Born in 1949 into a Lebanese family that emigrated to Mexico, Clariond has spent much of her life traveling between Mexico, the United States, and Spain, and she writes about varieties of exile and the fearsome complexity of the US–Mexican border with rare insight. Even rarer: she gives voice to her own interiority in a way that is accessible and piercing, as though her true country is inside of each reader. Even Time Bleeds is a revelatory selection of her work translated by Forrest Gander.

Forrest Gander is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, translator, essayist, and novelist. The A.K. Seaver Professor Emeritus of Literary Arts & Comparative Literature at Brown University, he is chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, and essays. These include: Twice Alive, the Pulitzer Prize winning Be With, amongst many others. His most recent collection is called Mojave Ghost and was published in 2024 by New Directions.

Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation