Poetic masterpiece by Antequera-born Muñoz Rojas is published in English

Who would have thought that a book by José Antonio Muñoz Rojas (1909-2009) would be translated into English 75 years after he wrote it? Andrew Dempsey and Álvaro García have done just that. They aimed to pay tribute to Muñoz Rojas - winner of the National Poetry Prize - and bring his thoughts to the English-speaking market in their translation of Las Cosas del Campo.

With the title The Life of the Fields, the English translation was launched recently in Antequera. Belén Molina Huete, lecturer at the University of Malaga, was in charge of presenting the event to cover the details of this translation - which has taken ten years to complete.

Within the simplicity of the language used by Muñoz Rojas, there is a lexical, compositional and, above all, cultural transmission that is difficult to find in today's English dictionary.

Dempsey shared how he first came to Antequera in 2000 to buy the author's book. He confessed that on his first reading, he understood little about the area, but was fascinated by the drawings and the way the men and women depicted life in the countryside. Years later, in 2015, he visited the town again, specifically the Casería del Conde, to visit one of the poet's sons, and it was through him that the invisible chain of destiny linked this Englishman with Muñoz Rojas.

Father Dominic Milroy had been the author's confessor and at the same time a teacher of English. He sent him his first translation of the work, which, according to Dempsey, arrived later with his reply, "a devastating letter" from the priest.

The project was put on hold until Dempsey met Gracía, the poet's daughter, and she took him to Álvaro García, who he said "saved my translation". They met between London, Marbella and Ronda, to finalise this translation "in dialogue, as the poet would have liked". He stressed the importance of this book, which is "absolutely universal, in the sense of time, in the sense of spaces and in the sense of languages". Muñoz Rojas highlighted the book as an "experience of Spain, of a specific period, which he reflected with subtlety, with a love of language, of words, of the countryside and of people".

Álvaro García shared that he did this work "out of enthusiasm and fervour for one of the great Spanish poets", and it has not been easy because "it is an apparently simple, apparently colloquial poetry that comes from the lyric that he likes, English. It's conversational in appearance and, of course, there is a complexity in the background, a weft of subtleties so that it does not fall into the picturesque or the merely impressionistic, but embeds itself into the current of life and the way in which the countryside and the people of the countryside express themselves".

The aim of this project was "to give an international voice to a poet who, by nature, already had it; so universal, very open to English culture, he was a reader at Cambridge and was the first translator of Eliot, who he met in person. Years later, as someone who enriched Spanish poetry with English influence, it is nice that he has returned and that, in some way, he remains in the sphere he loved so much".