Nicaraguan poet, revolutionary comes to CU

Ernesto Cardinal, a Nicaraguan priest described as Latin America’s master poet, is scheduled to appear on the University of Colorado campus on April 26 and April 27.

Father Cardenal will visit with students, read from his works and sign copies of his newest collection of poems. His visit is sponsored by the CU Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Latin American Studies Center, Department of History, Department of Religious Studies and the Graduate Committee on the Arts and Humanities. It is part of a tour of 12 U.S. and Canadian campuses.

Father Cardenal’s North American visit coincides with the release of his latest volume of poetry, published by Texas Tech University Press, and also with the U.S. screening of the Mexican film “Solentiname: Ernesto Cardenal,” which examines the story of the poet, priest and revolutionary who fought to bring down the U.S.–backed Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979.

Father Cardenal served in the revolutionary Sandinista government in Nicaragua but later left the government, reportedly because he disliked the authoritarianism of former Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

Father Cardenal was educated at Jesuit schools in Nicaragua and Mexico; he also studied at Columbia University. He joined a Trappist monastery in Kentucky and a Benedictine monastery in Mexico before being ordained a priest in 1965 in Nicaragua.

In part because of his embrace of Liberation Theology, Father Cardenal was admonished by the late Pope John Paul II, who reportedly urged the priest to “make good your dealings with the church.”

“It is a great honor to have El Padre—Father Cardenal—to spend such an extended time with North American audiences,” said Irene Vilar, editor of Texas Tech University Press’ series The Americas, in which Cardenal’s book, “The Origin of Species and Other Poems,” is included.

“At 86, Cardenal is digging deeper than ever to give testimony through his writings to the empowering capabilities of liberation theology and of writing, music, and painting, all arts he practices and tours the world to promote,” said Vilar.

Cardenal continues to craft works of striking beauty, as demonstrated in this collection’s title poem, “an exquisite meditation on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution,” TTU Press stated.

Among the 20 new poems included in the new volume are many appearing for the first time in English, some for the first time anywhere. Cardenal has also added new cantigas, or cantos, to supplement his book-length masterpiece, “Cosmic Canticle.”

Poet Robert Bly praised Cardenal’s work as “impure, defiantly, in that it unites political ugliness and the beauty of imaginative vision.”

“Cardenal is a major epic-historical poet, in the grand lineage of Central American prophet Rubén Darío,” said the late poet Allen Ginsberg.

Father Cardenal will do a bilingual reading from “The Origin of Species” at 10 a.m. Tuesday, April 26, in CU’s Old Main Chapel. On Wednesday, April 27, at 5 p.m. in Old Main Chapel, he will read from his memoirs and discuss Liberation Theology in historical context. The event will include audience participation and a post-event book-signing in Humanities 350.

For more information, contact Anne Becher in the Department of Spanish and Portguguese at 303-492-7308, anne.becher@colorado.edu or spanport@colorado.edu.

April 20, 2011