Whales and Whales

The first English translation of one of the most pivotal collections in contemporary Galician poetry, Whales and Whales navigates the urgent, playful, shapeshifting journey of a young woman affirming her place in the world. Caught between a father toiling far away in the icy waters of the Atlantic, and a mother who works in a canning factory, Luisa Castro’s ‘daughter of the sea’ casts her voice from her home on the North Galician coast. Throwing the romantic clichés of love, labour, girlhood and rural living overboard, Castro’s subtle sleight-of-hand — fluidly sung into English by Keith Payne — brings the innocent, irreverent desires of her emboldened protagonist to life. Disarmingly vulnerable and intensely liberating, these poems reveal the dreams and awakenings of a young girl becoming a woman in a society yet to learn how to accommodate her.