Civil Poems

Gabriel Trujillo Muñoz (Mexicali, Mexico, 1958). Poet, essayist and novelist, lives on the Mexican border with the United States. He was one of the founders of Binational Press (1987-1996) and New Borders (2014 to date), projects that have sought to illuminate art and literature from both sides of the international line. He is the author of Historical, Detective, Fantasy and Science Fiction novels, many of which take place on the border. As an essayist, he has been concerned with studying the artistic manifestations of his region. As a poet, his main themes have been the exploration of the frontier as a home of mirages and wonders, the inquiry of the desert as a sacred zone and the recounting of his personal past as truthful mirror of his time and circumstance. Some of his books of poetry are Perceptions (1983), After the Mirage (1989), In Broad Daylight (1992), Gift of Tongues (1995), Constellations (1997), Stubble (2001), Bordertown (2006), Boundaries (2007), Civil Poems (2013), Lights on (2016), Periphery (2016) and Out of Order (2018). The San Diego University Press published Permanent Work (1993), an anthology of his poetry. He is a member of the Mexican Academy of the Language since 2011.

This book puts on the table the work of the poet (and of the creator in general) in a convulsed world, in a time where indifference is not an option. Civil Poems explores Mexico's current affairs through poems that employ images and apocalyptic language to portray the profound national crisis it is suffering. Mexico's brutal reality seen through the gaze of a civil concern that will make you rethink your own reality.