Poet and columnist · 1894-1980
Poet and columnist
Chona Madera was the pen name of María de la Ascensión Madera Pérez, a poet and columnist born and deceased in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Her work, published from the post-war period onwards, holds a distinctive place among twentieth-century Canarian women writers.
The Biblioteca de Canarias identifies Chona Madera as María de la Ascensión Madera Pérez and places her birth in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1894. She published poems in island, Spanish and international newspapers and journals, including Mujeres en la isla, Poesía hispánica and Alaluz. This circulation means that her career cannot be reduced to a single book or a local publishing venue.
Her first poetry collection, El volcado silencio, appeared in 1944. The library places her within post-war Canarian poetry and notes that her voice moved away from the gender roles dominant in her generation. The Academia Canaria de la Lengua also preserves documentary information about her 1894 baptism and examines an intimate poetry that does not simply fit the dominant currents of the period.
In 1967 she received the Tomás Morales Poetry Prize for Los contados instantes. Her later presence in anthologies and in the Escritores y escritoras de Canarias catalogue supports reading her as an author whose work has been recovered and studied, rather than as a merely nominal reference.
Canon and poet
1538 - 1610
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1756 - 1815
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