J.M. Antolín is a poet and painter born in Valladolid, Spain (1968). He has lived in the United States for more than twenty years. His books of poetry include Cuenco [Bowl] (1985-1989); the trilogy El Cuerpo del Libro Quemado-Ojo Vivo- Los Animales Extinguidos [The Body of the Burned Book] (1990-1998); Elegías del Rio Brazos [Elegies of the Brazos River] (2018). His long-awaited book, El Alimento No Humano [Non-Human Nourishment] (1998-2011), the result of a transformative period in New York city and expected to be a medular work for poetry written in the Spanish language, remains elusively unpublished. Selections from his work were included and translated for the first time by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Forrest Gander in the anthology Panic Cure: Poetry from Spain for the 21st Century (Otis Books, L.A.2014). Under the title La Soldadura de Hemisferios [The Welding of Hemispheres] he will publish a comprehensive anthology collecting the two halves of his creative works between his life in Europe and America linking poetry, drama, and thought. J.M. Antolín has also spent years editing and translating a poetry anthology, Strange Voices from the Wide Ecosystem, his idiosyncratic approach to American poetry. As a painter, J.M. Antolín was the youngest to win the Caja España national prize of painting in 1990 with the work El Hospital Africano [The African Hospital]. His philosophical interests have most-recently been centered on Heidegger’s understanding of the relationship between Poetry and Philosophy. This through-line of thought permeates both his poetry and painting.
