Cuadernos de Hiroshima

Cuadernos de Hiroshima is a visceral and evocative collection of poems that delves into the experience of the outer and inner journey. Throughout its more than fifty poems, the author explores the constant displacement of his poetic voices - tourists, lovers, disenchanted travelers - who wander through streets, love hotels and atomic ruins, searching for meaning in a world that oscillates between beauty and chaos. The book dives into collective memory, with Hiroshima as the symbolic epicenter of devastation and resilience, while demystifying the idealized Japan of tourist postcards. Through a raw and sensual gaze, Toro addresses the body and desire as central axes: sexual encounters in ephemeral motels and romantic relationships become metaphors for vulnerability and the search for connection in a landscape of urban loneliness. This poetics of the flesh dialogues with a subtle critique of the commodification of pleasure in capitalist societies. Rich in intertextuality, Cuadernos de Hiroshima weaves bridges with the beat generation, Japanese countercultural literature and the universal tradition -from Dante to Lorca, from Kerouac to Kawabata-, endowing the text with a thought-provoking scholarly layer. The concept of 'tourist' develops a common thread accompanied by a melancholy that crosses time and space. With a language that combines the lyrical and the stark, Toro offers a work that is both a lament for the lost and a hymn to the persistence of human desire in the face of the abyss.

José Toro (Córdoba,1981) es graduado en Ciencias de la Comunicación, Periodismo, por la Universidad Autonóma de Barcelona y ha ejercido como reportero fotográfico y redactor en diversos medios como La Vanguardia, ABC o El Ideal. Tras un largo periplo personal y profesional por distintas ciudades de España, se instala en Córdoba donde trabaja desde 2010 como profesor de Historia en Secundaria y Bachillerato. Fotógrafo, pintor y poeta, compagina su labor docente con exposiciones plásticas y la escritura. En 2023 publica su primer poemario, Cruel amapola, en la colección 'Culpables' de Editorial Cántico. En 2025 publica su segundo libro, 'Cuadernos de Hiroshima' en el mismo sello.