Mexico City, Jan 30 (IANS/EFE) Mexican poet Francisco Hernandez has won the 2010 edition of the Mazatlan Literature Prize for his work "La isla de las breves ausencias" (Island of Brief Absences), organisers said in a statement.

"La isla de las breves ausencias" is the second book on poetry to win the Mazatlan Prize in its 36-year history. The other work by Jose Gorostiza was the inaugural winner of this literary contest in 1965.

The work is a autobiographical meditation on the loneliness wrought by illness, in which Hernandez "immerses himself in hallucinating trances and visions that enable him to cross vast oceans of conscience to these islands, where ... it is possible to get a glimpse of a parallel life, perhaps the only one that is true," the statement said Friday.

After learning of the jury's decision, Hernandez, who suffers from epilepsy, described the book as "a cathartic, very painful book that has much to do with loneliness and illness, because at the end of the day someone suffering from epilepsy is a lonely man, and perhaps more lonely than others."