Giovanni Quessep is one of the most important and innovative Colombian poets, and one of the eminent poets of the Levantine diaspora from Latin America. He was born on January 6, 1939 in San Onofre, northern Colombia to a father from Tannourine Lebanon, and a mother from Bogotá.He published his first poetry book, After Paradise in 1961, and his second, Being is not a Fable in 1968 while he was in Italy. This collection marked the start of his unique poetic voice. Quessep’s voice is unmistakable, and his 14 poetry collections, and three volumes of collected poems has been widely written about and deeply admired in Colombia. He was awarded the Premio Nacional De Poesía José Asunción Silva in 2004, the IX Premio Nacional de Poesía por Reconocimiento de la Universidad de Antioquia in 2007, the Premio Mundial de Poesía René Char in 2015, among others. Nathalie Handal is translating poems from his entire body of work in a collection entitled, The Other Blue: Collected Poems 1968-2025.
