“There is no one / you see / there is nothing / and yet / this is not silence.” Word of Ada Salas (Cáceres, 1965), the celebrated Extremaduran poet, who this Monday closes in Cartagena the fifth edition of the Deslinde festival (20 hours, Isaac Peral auditorium, Faculty of Business Sciences, Old CIM; limited capacity prior reservation at https://cultura.cartagena.es/). The 1994 winner of the prestigious Hiperión Prize for ‘Variaciones en blanco’ has not been lavished excessively in the Region of Murcia, but today she also plans to participate in the deliberations of the XXXV Antonio Oliver Belmás International Poetry Prize, which will be announced this morning and whose jury he has been part of.
Any encounter with the readers produces an inner chill in him. “Everything is always a first time!”, Acknowledges LA VERDAD from Madrid, where she teaches as a Language and Literature teacher. Salas is the author of La sed ‘(1997) and’ Lugar de la derrota ‘(2003); he won the Juan Manuel Rozas Prize for his first book, ‘Arte y memoria del inocente’ (1988), and the XV Ricardo Molina-Ciudad de Córdoba Prize, for ‘This is not silence’ (2008). He has published ‘The animal does not sleep’ (2009), ‘Someone here’ (2005), ‘The margin. The error. The erasure (of the metaphor and other more or less poetic matters) ‘(Fernando Pérez Essay Prize, 2010) and’ Descent ‘(2016), a tribute to the painting by Rogier Van der Weyden that is exhibited by the Prado Museum and that Carlos Marquerie performed at the La Abadía theater in Madrid with Niño de Elche. «They made a musical score from the text, and I sang poems on stage, an amazing experience for me. One of those gifts that life has given me is being able to collaborate and come together with the work of others ».
In his recital, he plans to dwell especially on poems from his last three books, ‘Limbo y otros poemas’ and ‘Descentación’, both published in Pre-Textos, and a previous volume, ‘Diez mandamientos’ (2016), the latter work that it also had Jesús Placencia as author and illustrator. “You feel closer to the last thing you have written, somehow, because you recognize yourself more, you are more in the time you are living, and I want more to read these latest books,” he confirms. The last thing he has published is precisely a joint work with monotypes by the graphic artist Laura Lio, entitled ‘Criba’ (Pezplata ediciones), «and it is a very special edition, a book-object, we have only published 150 copies, signed by both. It has a large format, a special paper … ».
ABOUT THE PANDEMIC
“I was, and still am, like angry with the world. And now almost more. I don’t know if we are doing it well, if we are coming out of this as I would like, in a calm way »
-He comes to Cartagena when the world faces the second autumn of the coronavirus pandemic. How have you felt all that time of restlessness and psychosis?
– I have had a very deep feeling of estrangement, like everyone. I am a high school ‘teacher’ and the pandemic meant a change in approach to work that was not pleasant. Actually, I worked a lot, and with a strange feeling that the work was not coming to fruition through a camera and virtual classes. Nothing has convinced me. Let’s say that it has almost made me enter a crisis with the profession. It has been a tough time, as for everyone, and I have not gotten particularly close to writing. I was, and still am, angry at the world. And now almost more, I don’t know if we are doing it well, if we are coming out of this as I would like, in a more relaxed way.
-It seems that it has not served to continue with another spirit.
-Perhaps there was a possible lesson in humanity in this that has happened to us that it seems that it has not penetrated, that we have not learned. I remember the applause time, at eight in the afternoon, which was so beautiful, and so exciting, for the toilets. And as I have just learned, the Community of Madrid drops the Health budget for this year by 4%, and that of Education as well. It is news that I do not understand, I cannot understand it. It’s as if we don’t want to hear what we have to say to ourselves. I have some anger with how we do things.
“How can we help you to mitigate the anger in some way?”
–I think we are all the same. I am not a special citizen, I am one more, and what happens to me happens to many. I believe that literature saves, of course reading and writing save me. Galdós has saved me this time, because I am reading almost all the ‘National Episodes’ to myself. And curiously, on the one hand, they save me, and, on the other, they are putting me in a very deep crisis with our country. Because the historical analysis, the display of knowledge about the essence of Spain that is in that work is tremendous and puts that book in front of the wall. It is being a very beautiful reading, but that history of the early nineteenth century of this country lasts, which somehow seems to be still beating.
–You say that writing a poem is like remembering, re-entering that “’extra-ordinary’ event” that is invoking memory. Do you have to be an observer to make it rounder?
“I don’t know if I’m an observer or not, but I would like to be.” The poems that surprise me the most are those that focus on seemingly insignificant things, of what surrounds us, and from the minuscule, capital truths are extracted in some way. It’s like from micro to macro, and only the greats do that. If my poems show a capacity for observation similar to that of the poets I admire, how wonderful! But I am not very aware. I do observe that the great truths are in the little things, not in grandiose speeches but in those that whisper things to you.
– Critics have praised brevity as one of their fixations. Was it already like this at first?
– In my first books my poems are very brief, sparing. Over the years, it seems that the breath of the poem has become more extensive. Excess does not go with poetry. I believe that writing is, more than knowing what to say, knowing how to keep quiet about what goes without saying. It’s like knowing how to subtract instead of knowing how to add. For me that is in poetry. In the narrative I imagine it will be something different. Once the text is written there is a task of knowing how to throw it away, or to give up I do not know how many verses, even if you like them, because it is not necessary to reiterate, or speak too loudly in poetry.
The “wonderful” youth
– Do you perceive interest in poetry among the new generations?
-Yes, poetry always comes, you have to approach it, because they don’t have it very close at hand, but once you accompany them a little, and they are helped to enter, the truth is that they enter wonderfully. It is the ideal age to start reading. The age at which one is more sensitive, and one is more open, the age with the greatest capacity to understand the incomprehensible. What happens is that with the educational system I am deeply critical, I believe that literature is not given enough space, and that is bringing serious consequences over the years. I think there should be a subject that was only literature, not language and literature. Many years ago with the Logse we lost that and we are paying for it. I think that, in general, we are not helping to generate readers. But youth is a wonderful age to start poetry. And those who enter write and read very well.
– Do they still have their afternoons, as it says in that poem, ‘a gesture of a surprised horse in a race’?
– That was the first poem of my first book. Yes, the afternoons always have that gesture for me. Those twilights that are and, suddenly, are not. That sensation of time that flees and runs and that we try to stop as in a photograph, and that runs, and goes …
Poets, says Ada Salas, have always been the voice of their time. «Poetry and art are there to say that life is something else too. The most truth is there ».
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