Mario Licón Cabrera
(Born 8th July 1949 in Nuevo Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, México. Died 28th July 2025 in Sydney)
It is with immense sadness that we mourn the loss of the Mexican Australian poet and translator, Mario Licón Cabrera. Born in Chihuahua México, he studied fine art at the Academia San Carlos in México City, before taking up photography in Berkley, CA. An early diagnosis of macular degeneration spelled the end of his photography career. A gifted puppeteer who had toured with Mireya Cueto, he immigrated to Sydney, Australia in 1992 and began writing poetry. Mario was an important figure in Sydney’s inner west poetry and literary scene, attending the book launches and events of our community with deep affection and respect for his fellow writers. He was an avid reader, a literary editor and a quietly engaged Australian Hispanic cultural promoter.
In 1998 he coordinated the Tribute to Octavio Paz at the Sydney Parliament House. In 1999 he was invited to the “Poetry Week” (Semana de la Poesia) in Barcelona. In 2000 he was part of the Homage to Pablo Neruda and César Vallejo together with M.T.C. Cronin, Judith Berveridge and Peter Boyle. In 2001 and 2003 Mario attended “Horas de Junio”, a popular writers festival in Hermosillo, Mexico. In 2007 he was invited to read at “Poetry Without Borders” at the Sydney Writers Festival.
Mario Licón Cabrera published four collections of poetry, including Yuxtas (Back & Forth), a bilingual edition supported by the Australia Council for the Arts in 2009. He won the Trilce Poetry Award in 2015 and 2016 (Premio de Poesía Trilce). Mario’s work has been included in numerous Australian and international anthologies. In 2017 his translated Poems of Mijail Lamas, Mario Bojórquez, and Alí Calderón, was published by Vagabond Press to critical acclaim. His most recent translations appear in In the small hours / A primeras horas de la madrugada, an anthology of poems by Peter Boyle, co-translated with Corina Oproae, Jordi Doce, Gustavo Osorio de Ita, Miguel Gomes and Guillermo Martinez González, published by Nautilus Ediciones, Zaragoza, Spain in April 2025.
Licón Cabrera translated many leading/prominent Australian poets into Spanish, among them Dorothy Porter, Judith Beveridge, Peter Boyle, Ali Cobby-Eckerman, Robert Adamson, Michelle Cahill, Sarah Holland-Batt, J.S Harry, Les Murray and many more. He was a regular contributor to two Mexican magazines, DosFilos and Círculo de Poesía, as well as the Australian online magazine Mascara Literary Review. Poems by Lucia Cupertino, were published in the anthology Resilience published by Ultimo Press and edited by Mascara Literary Review‘s co-editors Anthea Yang, Monique Nair and Michelle Cahill. He was the representative of Alforja Revista de Poesia from the magazine’s inception, publishing his poetry and translations there several times. He was a twice serving judge for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in the Translations Category. (2020 + 2021).
As well as a new collection of poems he had been working on a major bilingual anthology featuring Australian and Latin American poets including Robert Adamson, Michelle Cahill, Alfredo Fressia, Juan Arabia, Eunice Andrada, Lionel Fogarty.
His poem ‘Casa Efemera’ was selected for interpretation by Welsh+Major for Metaphors of Space, a poetry and architecture installation curated by Mascara and MCHP Architects at the Sydney Writers’ Festival using kirigami paper, folding and cutting. Mario read at this event with Elizabeth Hodgson, Pam Brown, Peter Boyle and David Musgrave.
Mario Licón Cabrera with Michelle Cahill and Winnie Dunn in Glebe, 2023