Justo Jorge Padrón (1943) was born on the Canary Islands. With 26 collections of poetry and twenty volumes of essays and translations, Padrón is a poet with a well-earned international reputation, who has been translated into 45 languages. Recipient of numerous literary prizes, among them the Swedish Academy’s award, he was a Nobel Prize contender in 2008. His collection of poetry about the circles of hell, Los circulos del infierno (1974-75), is considered an unparalleled achievement of modern Spanish literature, together with his monumental trilogy, Hesperida (2005-10), which has been acclaimed as the foundational work of contemporary Spanish lyric. He has been praised by no lesser figures than Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Vargas Llosa, Jorge Louis Borges, Ernesto Sabato, as well as Artur Lundkvist, Alain Bosquet, and Marin Sorescu.
He too is a translator, of Swedish, Bulgarian and Romanian poets, among others. He has organized several international poetry festivals in Spain. – His Los circulos del infierno appeared in Hungarian (A pokol körei) in 1996, translated by Éva Tóth.