Lorcation by Brian Dedora, Spanish translation by Martín Rodríguez-Gaona

When acclaimed Canadian writer Brian Dedora travelled to Spain in 2012 to explore “Lorca’s Granada,” he experienced an unexpected transformation that set him on a path of understanding—of the life and work of Federico Garcia Lorca, of the basic elements in common between the Spanish writer’s life and his own, and of the tragic grandeur of Lorca’s death in Granada in 1936.

Lorcation progresses transformationally from prose poem to informal essay, sustained by its three vital metaphors of journey, suitcase, and crossroads. The book, presented as a bilingual English and Spanish edition, follows Dedora’s reading and re-enactment of Lorca’s life and writing, especially the Spanish author’s emergent awareness of his homosexuality, culminating, for Dedora, in a new understanding of Lorca’s call to attend to the living within the enigma of death.

With its blending of the personal with the historical, Lorcation by Brian Dedora will fascinate lovers of Lorca’s writing, and may just spur on a whole new generation of readers to discover the life, loves, and losses of this enigmatic Spanish virtuoso.
Watch the Book Launch and Reading:

Praise for Lorcation:

“Exciting, moving, a gift for us, a gift for Lorca. Dedora traces an under-the-skin map of both poets’ physical and emotional landscapes.” —Laura García Lorca, President, Federico García Lorca Foundation, Madrid

Praise for Brian Dedora:

“Gutsy writing from a diving heart that knows how to surface from darkness into the liberating play of language. Stories within stories of growing up Other. Brian Dedora’s sleight-of-hand narrating offers social recognitions with all the casualness of experience as it hits, hard.” —Daphne Marlatt

“Dedora drags the past without misty-eyed backward looking or anything that reads like recrimination; just a tautly measured parsing of what occurred and the implicit amazement that anyone in midlife feels that somehow one has ducked and dodged at just the right time and managed to make it this far.” —Bill Richardson

“Dedora… creates a perfectly homogeneous book, ‘a continuum of traces’ into the future. A truly haunting reading experience.” —Lola Tostevin

Reviews:

“Lorcation moves forward into the essay that declares the union of poet then & poet now, how this knowledge fortifies the writer discovering the depth of his connection to the older poet & his vision.” —Douglas Barbour, Eclectic Ruckus

“This is a quintessential Canadian work.” —Lakshmi Gill

Interviews and Profiles:

On Writing: Brian Dedora —Open Book Toronto

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British Columbia-born Brian Dedora is a writer and performance artist whose work has been anthologized and widely published in special and limited editions. His books include Eye Where: A Book of Visuals (2014), A Few Sharp Sticks (2011), A Slice of Voice at the Edge of Hearing (2008), which was shortlisted for the ReLit and George Ryga Awards, With WK in the Workshop (1989), as well as White Light (1987). Dedora lives in Toronto, Canada and Granada, Spain.

Martín Rodríguez-Gaona (Lima, 1969) has published several books of poetry, including Efectos personales (Personal Effects) (1993), Pista de baile (Dance Track) (1997), Parque infantil (Playground) (2005), Codex de los poderes y los encantos (A Codex of Powers and Spells) (2011), and Madrid, línea circular (Madrid, circular line) (2013, winner of the City of Cáceres Poetry Prize), and the essay “Mejorando lo presente. Poesía española última: posmodernidad, humanismo y redes” (Improving the present. Latest Spanish poetry: postmodernism, humanism and networks) (2010). He was a fellow at the Foundation Residencia de Estudiantes from 1999–2001, and worked as literary advisor for this institution until 2005. He also won the International Fellowship of Poetry Antonio Machadode Soria in 2010. His translations of poetry include La sabiduría de las brujas de John Giorno (2008) and Pirografía (Pyrography: Poems 1957–1985) (2003), a selection of ten books by John Ashbery.