The highly praised poetry of José Luis González Sanjuan, whose pen name is Fernando Denis, is greatly influenced by English poetry and painting of the nineteenth century. In fact, this imaginative son of the tropics — he was born on the Caribbean coast — has proclaimed himself a Pre-Raphaelite “in love with dreams”. He has published three volumes of poetry, in the third of which he collected his first book — The Invisible Creature in the Sunsets of William Turner — and two more books, under the title The Red Wine of Syllables.

Although he studied Philosophy, Linero says that being born on the day the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, was launched, he could not escape being a musician and a poet. The titles of three of his books point to his love of music — son, bolero, jazz— and he has written and produced several music CDs. Philosophy is a constant influence in his poetry, in which he aspires to exalt humanist values.

A chemist by training, Mauricio Contreras teaches in several schools in Bogotá. For more than a decade he was a publisher of poetry and an active reviewer of books in magazines and newspapers. He has published three books of poetry, is co-author of an anthology of Colombian poetry and another of mystery tales. He has translated a volume of selected poems by the Brazilian poet José Paulo Páes. He won the National Poetry Prize (City of Bogotá) 2005 with the book from which this selection is taken, La herida intacta (The intact wound).