Bonus interview about poetry, Márquez, Latin America and more.
1. Let's start the interview with the first question, in order to honor the legacy of great
Gabriel García Márquez. How magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez influenced the Latin
American poetry and in particular your poetry? Marquez began artistic career as a poet
and then he switched to prose. Do you think this boom of prose is the reason why we
know so little about his poetry? So is it the reverse side of the coin of his life - this tragedy
for poetry, which caused the loss of Márquez as the poet and thousands of other young
poets, who switched to prose because of his influence and because of the chase for
success?
You know, Gabriel García Márquez was a novelist, as well as most of the other authors of the so
called Latin American boom of the sixties. In a way, I think the boom meant a sort of inconvenience
for the development of poets here because from that time on everybody wanted to be a novelist,
not a poet. I don't think my poems have much of the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez,
but there's an element of magic in them that is sure connected with surrealism. I believe something
else influenced me of this writer... the search of a more natural voice... not so convoluted or
baroque but more spontaneous, a writing that is easy for the reader. And it is sure a tragedy for
poetry, in a sense. E.g. in Chile is easy to detect a decline in the poetical art since my generation
probably, most great poets in Chile still belong to the 40's and 50's generations or even older ones.
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2. So what is Chilean poetry like? Do Chilean poets follow the traditions or do they have
their individual styles?How often poets translate themselves into English and do they
choose English as the primary language or do they prefer to write in Spanish?
I am not such a specialist in the contemporary authors, but almost all of them write in Spanish. A
few of them translate into English or other European languages or have written in these foreign
language a few pieces. There are different styles like the anti-poetry invented by Nicanor Parra,
which in my opinion is a form of belated dadaism which often adopts the form of humorous poetry.
Basically it is an antidote against the sublime style adopted by traditional poets which became
overwrought. Of course a football match can be sublime or trascendent if you manage to connect it
with the great subject of poetry but I am afraid the anti-poet more often than not strays his way
and, after all, the sublime is what make poems worth writing or reading
...
Interviewer: Т. Istomina