Fiat Lux

Paula Abramo’s Fiat Lux, winner of Mexico’s 2013 Premio de Poesías Joaquín Xirau Icaza for the best book of poetry by a writer under 40, is a collection evoking the poet’s ancestors who were political refugees from Italy and Eastern Europe to Brazil at the turn of the twentieth century, and then from Brazil to Bolivia and finally Mexico in later eras. At the same time, it is a meditation on the act of writing poetry and bringing characters to life with fidelity and imagination. The hinge connecting the two themes is the recurring image of striking a match. (Abramo’s grandmother worked in a match factory in Brazil producing the brand called Fiat Lux, Latin for “let there be light.”)