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Nicolás Guillén Batista was born in Camagüey on July 10th 1902. His father, Nicolás Guillén, was at that time the director of the newspaper Las dos repúblicas and he was murdered in 1917. Guillén took his primary studies from 1908 to 1912. He learnt typography working in the newspaper La Libertad, where his father had been previously designated as a director. He worked as a typographer between 1918 and 1918 and after getting his baccalaureate degree in 1920 he enrolled in the Law School in La Habana, although he was soon forced to abandon his studies and to come back to Gamagüey because of his lack of economic resources. By that time, he published his first poems and he started working as a journalist.
His work, its overflowing humanist content and its inimitable rhythmical freshness, places him among the greatest Spanish language poets ever.
Nicolás Guillén passed away in La Habana, on June 17th 1989, aged 87.
Island of red coral: "lit island, island of red coral, full of bright visions: the Antilles sea, the boats rocking, the clouds wandering through the blue, the drum of the bongo, the echo of the guitar, up there the burning Sun of the Tropic.
Brilliant visions inside Nicolás Guillén’s heart of a poet, which is similar to the red coral of an island, non-stop beating in his writings” (Ana Pelegrín, in the prologue).
“A beautiful book of poetry by Nicolas Guillén (1902-1989), one of the most brilliant poets who wrote in Spanish… the prologue by Ana Pelegrín results to be quite revealing about Guillen’s poetry and, specially, about the poems contained in this book. The included glossary can help to appreciate better the richness of Guillen’s verses” (CLIJ, Children and Young Adults’ Literature Notebooks).
