Salgado Maranhão, leading Afro-Brazilian poet, songwriter, and winner of Brazil’s highest literary award (the Academy of Letters Prize), will present his newly translated collection, Blood of the Sun, with American translator Alexis Levitin at 7 p.m., Monday, Nov. 5, in a free reading at Prairie Lights Books in downtown Iowa City. The reading also will be streamed live on the University of Iowa Writing University website.

Maranhão’s A Cor da Palavra (The Color of the Word) was named the best book of poetry by the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 2011. An earlier collection, Mural de Ventos (Mural of Winds), won the prestigious Prêmio Jabuti in 1999. In addition to his nine books of poetry, Maranhão has written song lyrics and made recordings with some of Brazil’s leading jazz and pop musicians.

Sol Sangüíneo (Blood of the Sun) is Maranhão’s first book to appear in English translation. In poems brilliantly textured and layered, Maranhão integrates socio-political thought with subjects abstractly metaphysical. Concrete collides with conceptual—butcher shops, sex, and machine guns in conversation with language, absence, and time—resulting in a collection varied as well as unified, an aesthetic at once traditional and postmodern.

For more information or special accommodations to attend this reading, call Jan Weissmiller at Prairie Lights, 319-337-2681. For a UI arts calendar and details about upcoming events visit the new Arts Iowa website.