Nomadic Nation / Nación Nómada

This expanded edition of Rubén Medina's 2010 chapbook Nomadic Nation / Nación Nómada includes a new introduction by the author about his poetics as well as new translations of work originally written in Spanish. Composed in English, Spanish and Spanglish, these important poems reflect on the lives of immigrants/emigrants, our restless spirits, and the human journey: "We are at the periphery of the center / and at the center of the periphery / at the same time."

Writes Medina in "Una poetica norteada": "There is no purity in language. There never has been. ... Interference can at times simply end up increasing the vocabulary of a dominant language, or provoke changes in structure and meaning, but quite often it also reveals a double voice or double consciousness. Spanglish marks the on-going tensions between assimilation and difference for the migrant subjects. It points also to the cycle of nation formation once again or to nation de-formation. ... I called my poetics, una poética norteada, alien, nomadic. This term, norteada/o, describes a person who is lost while pursuing a destination. To be lost is of great artistic, political and existential value, since that lost person seeks a way out knowing in the process that getting on the right road is not necessarily a destination."