This seventeenth century poem was first published in 1692, but the date of its writing is unknown. It is one of the most important poems written by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, who was born out of wedlock as Juana Ramírez de Asbaje in or around 1651. She chose to become a nun in order to have freedom to study, and in the Convent of Santa Paula in Mexico City she had her own apartment where she amassed one of the largest private libraries in the New World, and a collection of musical and scientific instruments. Favoured for her intelligence by Antonio Sebastián de Toledo, which earned her his patronage, amongst others, as viceroy of New Spain, she had exceptional freedom to write, and to be published. The poem has a complex Baroque structure, and tells of the difficult quest of the soul for knowledge over the course of a night of dreaming that she herself was deeply involved in. For me, the poem represents her and the inspiration she provides in the choices that she made, the room of her own that she constructed, and the place that she made for the intelligence of women to be recognised and valued – something that she defined and  fought for in her 1691 defence of all women’s right to knowledge called ‘Reply to Sister Filotea of the Cross’.