Inside / Desde la Carcel: Prison Poetry from Argentina, 1975-1981

This bilingual edition contains anonymous poetry, drawings and letters by political prisoners held by Argentina’s military dictatorship (1976-1983), selected and translated by Girasol Press editors in association with Mexico City’s CAMeNA (Centro Académico de la Memoria de Nuestra América), where the manuscripts are held, and with Dr Cornelia Gräbner, Lancaster University. Printed entirely on risograph by 16 Tonne Press on White Metaphor 100gsm, with Black Ebony endpapers and Gmund Bier Pils 250gsm covers. Cover designed by the artist Abi Goodman.

The poems in Inside were smuggled out of the military junta’s prisons and detention centres to Mexico City, where they were published in 1981 to raise funds for the political prisoners. Presenting them in English for the first time, Inside explores the displacement of being confined in place that characterises the carceral experience. First writing and then translation allows poetry to transcend the forced confinement of the prison cell, as these fugitive manuscripts have travelled from Argentina to Mexico, and now to the UK.