Tunnel of the Green Prow

Carol A. Stos is an assistant professor of Spanish at Laurentian
University.

Superbly translated by Hugh Hazelton, this bilingual edition of poems by
Nela Rio, an Argentine-born Canadian poet, is a profound and moving
testament to the resilience of women who have suffered, endured, and
survived as prisoners of conscience.

At the outset, Rio states that “[i]n times of repression,
persecution, imprisonment, / torture, disappearance, and exile, / I
remember you, woman, in silence and in words.” The 28 poems that
follow trace the abusive pattern of repressive regimes, drawing the
reader into the thoughts and body of every woman who has experienced
such a regime’s terror. The poems, which are numbered rather than
titled, chronicle endless days of oppression—the inevitable
progression from censorship and fear, to persecution and imprisonment,
to brutality and torture.

But hope is not extinguished. “[In] the long radiant nightmare / of a
woman of flesh bone blood / a scent of reborn ashes,” there is always
“yearning for rescue through the word.” The word is both Rio’s
poetry, with its images “that fly back and forth across a horizon full
of visions / each day viscerally reconstructing those of yesterday,”
and her poetic act of remembering, speaking out, and never forgetting.
As she declares, “[A] written word they shall never violate.”