Dulce Maria Loynaz (1902-1997) has been called Cuba's own Emily Dickinson. Although Loynaz was widely published in Spain during the 1950s and was a close friend of Federico Garcia Lorca, Juan Ramon Jimenez and Gabriela Mistral, her poetry was forbidden in her own country and she herself was ostracised under Castro's dictatorship. Unlike many Cuban writers and intellectuals, Loynaz did not go into exile after the Cuban Revolution. She remained in Cuba, but she never joined the Communist Party and her poetry was considered taboo because of its individualistic, apolitical preoccupations. Loynaz's poetry and prose were not published in Cuba until 1993, a year after she unexpectedly won the Cervantes Prize at the age of 90. Today, Loynaz stands alongside Jose Marti, Nicolas Guillen and Jose Lezama Lima as one of Cuba's greatest cultural icons. The first English publication of her work, "Against Heaven" contains a selection of poems from each of Loynaz's books translated by James O'Connor, including the acclaimed prose poems from "Poems with No Names", and a selection of posthumously published work.

Translated by: James O'Connor