The first English translation of one of the most pivotal collections in contemporary Galician poetry, Whales and Whales navigates the urgent, playful, shapeshifting journey of a young woman affirming her place in the world. Caught between a father toiling far away in the icy waters of the Atlantic, and a mother who works in a canning factory, Luisa Castro’s ‘daughter of the sea’ casts her voice from her home on the North Galician coast. Throwing the romantic clichés of love, labour, girlhood and rural living overboard, Castro’s subtle sleight-of-hand — fluidly sung into English by Keith Payne — brings the innocent, irreverent desires of her emboldened protagonist to life. Disarmingly vulnerable and intensely liberating, these poems reveal the dreams and awakenings of a young girl becoming a woman in a society yet to learn how to accommodate her.

Luisa Castro is the author of nine collections of poetry and six novels. She has been awarded the King Juan Carlos Prize, The Hiperión Prize and the Herralde Prize among others. She was Director of the Cervantes Institute in Naples (2012-2017), Bordeaux (2017-2022), and is currently Director of the Cervantes Institute in Dublin (2022-present). She is a regular contributor to the Spanish El País newspaper and celebrated as one of the most important voices in contemporary Galician poetry.

Keith Payne is the author of nine collections of poetry in translation and original poetry, most recently Building the Boat (Badly Made Books, 2023), as featured on BBC Radio 4’s The Essay. He was John Broderick Writer in Residence 2021- 22, Cork City Eco Poet in Residence 2023, was awarded an Artist in the Community Scheme from Create in 2022 and an Arts Council Literature Bursary in 2022. Awarded an Irish Professor of Poetry Bursary Award in 2016, he curates the Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill Poetry Exchange Ireland/Galicia.