Mar Benegas (Valencia, 48 years old) is a woman who cares for and values childhood, who speaks slowly and recites poems so that children and teenagers can discover the world through poetry. Because this poet believes that children have a connection with verses, but it is the adults who “always fail”, those who, when children begin to write and read, forget to recite poems to them. “What excites needs a journey, a learning process and, above all, accompaniment, and that is what fails”, she explains during the conversation in a hotel in Madrid on a sunny morning in early June, having just arrived by train from Valencia.
The poet, winner of the Cervantes Chico Prize for the year 2022, an award given by the Alcalá de Henares City Council (Madrid) for a lifetime literary career in children’s and young adult literature, and a teacher at her school The site of words —Web platform for resources and training in children’s literature and reading promotion: online and in-person workshops and courses, poetry and literature.— Benegas is currently involved in the organisation of the Reading, Writing and Observation Promotion (JALEO) days, which she directs together with Jesús Ge, a stage poet, teacher and reading mediator, and which will be held from 9 to 12 July in Valencia: “People are coming from Argentina and Vienna and it is becoming increasingly clear to us that these spaces for listening, meeting and reflecting on literature are needed, not only for experts, but also for all families.”
ASK. What is it about poetry that attracts children the most?
ANSWER. For children, poetry is not a tool, but rather they live in it, as Gabriela Mistral said. It is part of the development of childhood itself, which makes it very easy for them to get hooked. After all, the first words we say to babies have to do with poetry, metaphors, rhythm. There is a special link between poetry and childhood. Normally, the problem is with us adults.
P. Why is it so hard for adults to approach her?
R. Because we have a way of life that is increasingly focused on the productive. In childhood, when we start with reading and writing, the objective has to do with obtaining results. Poetry, in itself, is not useful for those things. It is more vital, it cannot be quantified in the same way, which is why it is largely rejected from the reading and writing process. From there, the distance is increasingly greater. When we reach secondary school and we have to approach poetry, out of obligation, the gap is so great that it is very difficult to recover it. It is not a question of childhood, but of adults who focus more on other types of obligations.
P. What are the benefits of reading poetry with children?
R. Part of poetry has to do with the subjective, the symbolic. This is absolutely essential in childhood because it is how we generate our own subjectivity, how we approach the emotional, to know and recognize ourselves. On the other hand, it has a learning part at the level of our own construction of the mind and how we relate to the world. Of transforming a painful world into something beautiful through poetry. It is so wonderful for childhood that I cannot understand why we continue to argue about what benefits it has. I do not know any child who does not like poetry and who does not connect with poetry.
P. And teenagers, what do they look for in verses?
R. When I work with young people, I always tell them that poetry saved my life. Especially during adolescence, because if there is a language that connects with human beings in that phase, which is suffering or pain, it is poetry. I will be a teenager comes from pain. The teenager is the one who suffers because, indeed, life in adolescence is one of the most difficult. Poetry has a connection with everything that is emotion, with the complex world of what we feel and what we are. If it is not in adolescence its time, it will be difficult for it to be in another.
P. Does anything go in children’s poetry?
R. No. I have been teaching children’s poetry for quite a few years and there is really a lack of knowledge. Not everything that rhymes is poetry. Just because you write for children doesn’t mean you have to water down the language. I think what is really difficult is to create a poem that is simple for children but not simple. That is the true mystery of poetry. You have to take into account the age group you are writing for and know what poetry is. Know what you are doing and who it is aimed at, and here is the essence of what a good poem for children needs.
P. What should families look for when choosing a good collection of poems?
R. There are many elements. If it is the first time you are going to read poems with your children, the important thing is that you also let yourself be carried away by what excites you. That connection that you have with what you are reading is what will connect them. And if they already have a reading background, they will already know authors or types of poems, because fortunately there are many poems: humorous, more metaphorical, texts from illustrated albums that are pure poems… There are girls who tell you “I don’t understand it, but it excites me”, well that is a clue Or “I like to hum”, “I like rhymes or tongue twisters”… See what kind of connection they have with you and look from there.
P. Does childhood need more rhymes, games and going outside?
R. Yes, we have never had a childhood or anyone so controlled. We live absolutely enslaved to screens and this is a drama because it eliminates a vital component of the body: the gaze. I remember a girl who told me: “I want to be a telephone so that my mother can look at me.” This is very dramatic, but that’s how it is. Or another who told me: “I would like to be a meme to be liked by everyone”. We are passing on to childhood a filtered and unreal way of seeing life, and poetry needs the body, the gaze. There is no time for freedom for boys and girls.
P. How can poetry help us return to that reality?
R. Poetry must be offered so that whoever needs it has it there. Suddenly, a poem, a few verses, move children and open up a cascade of something that had not happened before. A girl in 6th grade, after finishing a recital, came to me, hugged me and said: “You made me laugh and cry at the same time.” I think that is the most beautiful definition that I have ever been given of poetry. It is experienced in the living, in the gaze, in the body, but through the screen everything is as if filtered. There is a real danger of losing that capacity. Poetry can help us by allowing it to be present, to be read. I always ask teachers and families how much it costs to leave the whirlwind for a moment each day, stop and read a poem. Two minutes? That is what connects us to the human.
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