Date and place

23/03/2018 - 20:00h

Alicante Town University Venue – Rafael Altamira Room.

4, Ramón y Cajal Avenue - Alicante

Presentation   

The recital that we are going to listen to this afternoon is an approach to this mysterious subject we call Latin American poetry. We all know that any choice implies a renunciation, as the cruel saying wisely and torturously says. We only wanted to show some of the poets who influenced the last century in our continent and apply to them the words that Jorge Reichmann once said about Gamoneda: “They listened, they spoke, they were silent. They are unequivocal in the cross they form: the vertical line of the cosmos with the horizontal line of life”.

The situation of poetry is not the same throughout Latin America.  The conjunctural collapse of thought is not what worries – there are people, for example Steiner, who predict worse moments for this old habit that dignified man at various historical moments – in a human geography plagued by threats, lacks and lags like the Latin American one. But what disarticulates is to see that the Latin American poetry, which has been written for a couple of decades, is circulating without critical appraisal and in the hands of a reader who confuses one writing with another because in another not too distant moment, he had already confused a thought with another thought. It is not chance which defined situations: there are some interests – which in practice are disinterests – so that nothing is moved in cultural terms. Our cultures – and poetry came into this game many years ago in Latin America – are inherited to eternity but are not discussed in the present. Poems are written in the present and wait for – again the same – being judged by eternity.

We have always believed that a poetry reader should be lucky to meet a great book so that a lasting relationship is created; otherwise, thousands of poetry readers are lost because they lack this contact. Some of those books make you believe in poetry and create a perpetual contract with the poetic word. Since they have a force, they have such a power to be transferred to the reader who is immediately touched by the magnetic power of his words. It is often said that when you read a real poet, a poet who transpires, words seem written as if it was the first time they have been written. And before the reader’s eyes and ears, this revelation, which many people have called “the miracle of poetry”, takes place.

In any case, we start from the conviction that the poets included here had, or still have, not only their residence on Earth but their residence in this world is largely explainable because they also reside in the suggestive and sometimes abused world of poetry. With this recital, we have tried to transmit not only our devotion to poetry but also our admiration towards those poets who against all odds lived or live in the conviction that the verses are something more than the food of the spirit.

Antonio Mula Franco

Presenter

Antonio Mula

Coordinator

José Luis Rico

Recite

• Conchi Agulló
• Antonio Mula
• Miguel Ángel Sánchez
• Josep Durá
• Nelly Ferreira G.
• Lucía Francisco
• Chelo Oñate
• Carmen F. Bolaños
• Mati Zamorano
• Mª Dolores Iglesias
• Paquita Baeza
• José Luis Rico
• Elvira Pizano
• Rafael Torres
• Mª Carmen Sacristán

Poems

ARGENTINA

• Versos otoñales (Autumnal verses)................ (Alfonsina Storni)
• Las cosas (Things).............................. (J.L. Borges)
• Noche (Night)........................ (Alejandra Pizarnik)

BOLIVIA

• El valle (The valley)...................... (Javier del Granado)

CUBA

• Soneto (Sonnet).......................... (Dulce Mª Loynaz)
• Alma música (Alma music).................... (Nicolás Guillén)

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

• Amor (Love).................... (Franklin Mieses Burgos)

URUGUAY

• Tal vez no era pensar (Maybe it was not thinking)............. (Idea Vilariño)
• Si Dios fuera una mujer (If God were a woman)...... (Mario Benedetti)

PANAMA

• Melancolía (Melancholy).......................... (Ricardo Miró)

NICARAGUA

• Qué sos Nicaragua (What are you Nicaragua)............... (Gioconda Belli)
• Yo persigo una forma (I follow a form).............. (Rubén Darío)

COSTA RICA

• Vestigios más allá del otoño (Vestiges beyond the autumn)..(Laureano Albán)

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