The Spanish Communist poet Marcos Ana (1920-2016) was Spains longest serving political prisoner. Captured by Italian troops at the end of the Civil War, he spent the next 23 years in Francos prisons, often in solitary confinement. In prison he started writing poems, which were smuggled out and published as Poemas desde la cercelá. Ana was eventually released in 1961, following an international campaign led by Pablo Neruda, Rafael Alberti, Jean-Paul Sartre, Yves Montand, Pablo Picasso and Joan Baez. Che Guevara was carrying one of Anas books when he was executed. Clear, musical, painful and compelling, Poems from Prison and Life is the first English translation of Anas last book, published when he was 91, in order to open a path of fire and rebellion in the hearts and minds of the new generations, in whose furrows we have sown our history.
Nomad