The Law of Conservation

The Law of Conservation is a poetry collection intensely attuned to landscape, both geographic and metaphorical.

Borders blurred as cities cede to rural land; the body as a changing place on an equally unstable map; the subsoil of sexuality; the terrain of memory, both rich and painful; new countries traveled and new roots set down as an adult, navigating desire, loneliness, and love.

In the context of gender and sexual identity, Spada’s work pays subtle, incisive attention to the inextricable relationship between transformation and conservation: transformation toward the experience of honoring and protecting our deepest and most abiding truths. At the same time, her poems also unsparingly explore the external shifts (in the speaker’s surroundings and even her memories) that make it so challenging to retain an unassailable sense of self.

Mariana Spada was born in Entre Ríos, Argentina, in 1979. She studied Literature in Santa Fe, Argentina, and lived in Buenos Aires for about a decade before moving to Barcelona, Spain, where she currently resides. The Law of Conservation is her first book.

Robin Myers is a Mexico City-based poet and Spanish-to-English translator. Robin’s poetry has been selected for the 2022 Best American Poetry anthology and appears in journals such as the Yale Review, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, Annulet Poetry Journal, and Massachusetts Review, among others. Her collections have been published as bilingual English-Spanish editions in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Spain.