Nicolás Guillén

Nicolás Guillén (1902–1989) was a prolific Cuban poet, journalist, and activist. Born in Camagüey to parents of African and European ancestry, Guillén worked in printing presses and studied law before moving into Havana’s literary scene. A virtuosic maker and breaker of forms, Guillén rose to fame by transforming a popular form of Cuban music into poetry that called attention to the experience of Afro-Cuban people, and he continued to interweave his artistic and political commitments as he traveled the world. Guillén received the Lenin Peace Prize, the International Botev Prize, and Cuba’s National Prize for Literature. In 1961, he was named National Poet of Cuba. He authored sixteen poetry collections, including Motivos de son, Sóngoro cosongo, West Indies Ltd., and El son entero. The first English-language anthology of his early work, Cuba Libre, was translated by Langston Hughes.