Ghettos and Peripheries –The Gibraltar Strait’s experience
Ghettos and Peripheries –The Gibraltar Strait’s experience
Trino Cruz, born in Gibraltar in 1960, is a bilingual writer and translator. He grew up in the Strait region, between Gibraltar, Morocco and Spain, an upbringing which has deeply influenced his personal vision of the Mediterranean as an inexhaustible crossroads, connected with even the most remote corners of our planet and memory.
After pursuing his studies in Marine Biology and Cellular Biology at the Universities of Liverpool and London, Trino embarked on a career in the financial industry for over 30 years before dedicating himself fully to writing and other cultural activities. His writing arises from the periphery of a fertile shore and is driven by a deep conviction that barriers in culture must be overcome by fostering a dynamics of exchange and collaboration between communities, wherever they may be. The underlying common ground needs to be uncovered and enriched each and every day, lest we allow other forces to pull us apart. He is currently involved in a number of regional cultural initiatives, and is on the editorial board of “SureS”, a literary journal published in Tangier (Morocco) and “Banipal - revista de literatura árabe moderna”. He has published several collections of poetry including Lecturas del espacio profanado (1992), Rihla (2003) and Mediodía del Cantor (2022). He has collaborated in numerous translations of Arabic and French poetry into Spanish, most recently “Adoniada” by Syrian poet Adonis. He has read his poetry in venues and poetry festivals in Spain, Morocco and South America. He was the Guest Writer in the London-based journal Banipal (Spring 2021), publishing a selection of poems from A Fertile Shore. He has reviewed “Poems of Alexandria and New York” by Ahmed Morsi, “Exhausted on the Cross: Poems” by Najwan Darwish. His most recent collaboration initiative, the “Strait Rhapsody Project”, involves live performances with other musicians, artists and writers.