Roberto Echavarren

Roberto Echavarren (born 1944 in Montevideo) is an Uruguayan poet and translator.

Biography Echavarren moved to Germany at the age of 20 after winning a scholarship to study philosophy, and later moved to France, where he earned his doctorate at the University of Paris VIII. He later moved to London and joined the local branch of the Gay Liberation Front, an experience that proved pivotal in his life, especially given that LGBTQ people were still being persecuted in Uruguay at the time.

He has taught in Europe, where he lectured at the University of London, and in the Americas, where he served as a professor for twenty years at New York University and continued his teaching career at the University of Buenos Aires (Rojas Institute) and currently at the University of the Republic (Faculty of Humanities).

He has translated works by William Shakespeare, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Ashbery, Wallace Stevens, Paulo Leminski, and Haroldo de Campos. He has also written monographs on authors such as Felisberto Hernández and Manuel Puig, as well as poetry, novels, and popular essays.

Works La Planicie Mojada, 1981; poems El espacio de la verdad: Felisberto Hernández, Buenos Aires, Sudamericana, 1981; essay Animalaccio, 1986; poems Montaje y alteridad del sujeto: Manuel Puig, Santiago de Chile, Maitén, 1986; essay Aura Amara, 1989; poems Poemas Largos, 1990 Universal Ilógico, 1994 Oír no es ver, 1994; poems Ave Roc, Montevideo, Graffiti, 1994; novel Arte andrógino: estilo versus moda, 1998 (expanded in Montevideo, Brecha, 2008); essay Performance, Buenos Aires, Eudeba, 2000 Margen de ficción: poéticas de la narrativa hispanoamericana, México, Joaquín Mortiz, 1992 El diablo en el pelo, Montevideo, Trilce, 2003 Casino Atlántico, Montevideo, Artefato, 2004; poems Centralasia, Buenos Aires, Tse-tse, 2005; poems Andrógino Onetti, 2007. Fuera de género: criaturas de la invención erótica, Buenos Aires, Losada, 2007 El expreso entre el sueño y la vigilia, Montevideo, Premio Fundación Nancy Bacelo, 2009 Ruido de fondo, Santiago de Chile, Cuarto Propio, 2009 Yo era una brasa, Montevideo, HUM, 2009 La salud de los enfermos, Montevideo, HUM, 2010; narrative Porno y postporno, Montevideo, HUM, 2011; essay (in collaboration with Ercole Lissardi and Amir Hamed) Las noches rusas. Materia y memoria, La Flauta Mágica, 2011; The Virgin Mountain, New Orleans, Diálogos Books, 2017; poem, translated by the author and Donald Wellman.