Lena Retamoso Urbano

Lena Retamoso Urbano is a poet and scholar currently serving as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish at Bennington College since Fall 2021. She earned her PhD in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures from The Graduate Center of CUNY.

• Research Focus: 20th/21st century Latin American and Spanish poetry, transnational surrealism, queer theory, avant-garde movements, and transatlantic cultural connections
• Creative Output: Three poetry collections (Light of Debris, Miracles of Absence, Blank is the Dream of the Night)

Her academic work explores intertextuality and the poetics of Eros, with publications on Garcilaso de la Vega, Blanca Varela, César Moro, and Luis Cernuda. Her article Sacralizing the Ephemeral (under contract with Vernon Press) examines the dialectic between lovers and the beloved in Cernuda and Moro. She received the NeMLA Creative Writing Award (2022) for her poem and the body rises.

Key trends in her scholarship include: cross-Atlantic surrealist dialogues, phenomenological approaches to poetic spatiality, and intersections between literature, film, and music. Her teaching spans Hispanic literature, culture, and creative writing at the college level.