Hispanic Society Launches New Poetry Center Initiative

The Hispanic Society Museum & Library has announced the launch of The Hispanic Society Poetry Center which will also house the archive of Chilean poet David Rosenmann Taub (1927-2023). 

Poet and scholar Ezequiel Zaidenwerg has been appointed as inaugural Head of the Poetry Center, the first endowed position at the Hispanic Society.  

A core element of the Poetry Center’s mission will be to provide a home for the archive of Rosenmann-Taub, described by Premio Nacional de Literatura laureate Armando Uribe as “the most important and profound living poet of the entire Spanish language.” Over the course of his life, he published 20 books, with a comparable body of unpublished work remaining. He was also an accomplished composer, pianist and draftsman, leaving behind more than 100 hours of recorded compositions and nearly a 1,000 drawings.

“We at Corda have long envisioned a Poetry Center that would serve a broad local and  international community and are thrilled to have found an ideal partner in the Hispanic Society Museum & Library,” said Virginia Odessky, Director of the Corda Foundation, a group of writers and artists  to preserve and promote Rosenmann-Taub’s legacy, and which has supported the initiative with a grant. 

Poet and translator Ezequiel Zaidenwerg co-founded Como un lugar, a multilingual poetry, music and  performance collective that has presented programming across New York, Buenos Aires and Bogotá, and created El poema de hoy, a widely read bilingual poetry translation platform. In addition to his curatorial and editorial work, Zaidenwerg is an author and translator, with multiple published poetry collections and translations of contemporary writers including Anne Carson, Jericho Brown, and Mark Strand.

“I am honored to join the Hispanic Society at such a pivotal moment,” he said. “The Poetry Center offers an extraordinary opportunity to connect the institution’s historic collections with the living, evolving practice of poetry today across languages, borders  and communities.” 

The new Center will serve as a platform for readings, performances, publications and cross-disciplinary collaborations, drawing from the Hispanic Society’s library and archives.
 
Founded in 1904, the Hispanic Society Museum & Library is one of the most important centers for research on Hispanic art and culture, containing many rare books and manuscripts. The library is open to the public by appointment.