Odetta in Babylon and the Canada Express

Translated by Gregorio Kohon with Toni Griffiths, Introduction by Gwen MacKeith. Bearing the unmistakable imprint of its time, as a voice in a chorus of writers from the counterculture of 1960s Argentina, Gregorio Kohon’s celebrated 1968 narrative poem is a masterful tale of a life lived on the edge, a transient life of odd jobs, moving around, impermanent homes, shared rooms, crashed parties, whole nights spent in bars and cafés, sleeping rough, surviving from one moment to the next.

Gregorio Kohon was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has published four books of poetry in Spanish: Puntos de Partida (1963), Ebrio Sale el Sol (1967), Odetta en Babilonia y el Rápido a Canadá (1968) and El Estilo del Deseo (2008). His novel Papagayo Rojo, Pata de Palo (2003) was a finalist in manuscript form for the 2001 Fernando Lara Prize, and was published in English as Red Parrot, Wooden Leg in 2007. He moved to England in 1970, where he studied and worked with R. D. Laing and his colleagues.