María Paz Guerrero: feeling poetry in the bones

If you type your name in the search engine, a profile of you appears on the side, taken from an interview that Infobae did with you at the time. Below a photograph of him it says that he was born in Bogotá on May 3, 1982. He studied Literature at the University of the Andes and Comparative Literature at the University of the Sorbonne-Nouvelle Paris 3. He says that in 2018 he published the book God is also a dog, with the publishing house Cajón de Sastre, that his work reflects on violence in Colombia, writing and thought, with an unbridled rhythm that accounts for the chaotic current affairs. She says that she is currently a professor in the Department of Literary Creation at the Central University. Then there are some poems of his on the Otro Páramo website, and below are articles about his work and other interviews.

The biographical review that appears on the flap of her most recent book says that she is the author of the poems Los illiterates, which she published with the Cajón de Sastre publishing house in 2018, of the selection and prologue of The Generation Without a Name. An anthology, which was published a year later with the editorial stamp of the Central University, and the essay: The Pain of Being Alive in 'The Posthumous Poems' by César Vallejo, published in 2006 by the Universidad de los Andes. He says that his poems appear in the anthologies Shadow Birds. Seventeen Colombian poets, 1989-1964 (Broken Glass, 2019) and Interior Abodes. Four Colombian poets (Universidad Javeriana, poetry collection, 2016). Speak of God is also a dog and says that it is translated into English by the Ugly Duckling Press in New York. She mentions where she has studied and what, and points out that she is pursuing a PhD in Literature Theory at the University of Zaragoza and is still working as a full-time professor at the Central University in Bogotá.

That's where I saw her for the first time. It was in 2017, I had just finished my degree in Linguistics and Literature, and I was planning to start a specialization. She was the teacher of one of the subjects I studied in the Specialization in Narrative Creation, in the department led at that time by Roberto Burgos Cantor. I remember that the first impression of all the students was the same: what a clever and most beautiful woman. If you asked in the other courses in the department, everyone thought the same way. I think the lucidity she has as a teacher has her as a poet. He was the person who guided me the most at that time about what my writing could become, where I should go, where I should look.

The classes were at night, because most of them worked. I wrote book reviews in the press and every now and then I flirted with the idea of writing stories. I still do. At the end of the classes, I kept asking María Paz questions, and she surprised me by asking me twice as many questions. We walked together to the bus station and talked about books and what you want to write about but you don't know how. Each one took his own way and twenty-four hours later we did it again. When the end of the year came, I missed her. Thanks to her I knew more than at the beginning and I was less lost inside myself. I graduated and it was the only one I continued to attend long after.

I worked as a bookseller and was in a publishing house, I continued to write about books in the press, and I haven't written my first book yet. She, Maria Paz, has already published three since we met. I keep following his trail, beyond the distances that everyday life imposes. I recently found out about the most recent one. His editorial contacted me to tell me about it and when I received it at home, I took it in my hands and opened it on a random page: “Don't have questions, don't have a phrase, don't have a list, don't have a syllable...” I kept thinking about those words of his, in that way he has to say the most difficult things as if it were the most subtle thing in the world, as if fear were a piece of paper that crumples in his pocket, as if death were water that evaporates, as if the passing of days were dust on the flap of a book.

Pink tongue outside, blind cat is a book that experiments with language, as a good book of poetry, that details the animal, the wild, the gross in human beings, in speaking, in acting; it delicately paints the searches for a voice that mocks, that reflects, that regrets what has been lived and for living. The voice of María Paz Guerrero is one of those. Today she is one of the most prominent Colombian poets. Little by little it ranks on the readers' radar. I was already in mine. With this book it got into my bones, because that is how poetry feels, as it decants it on the pages, deep inside, in the bones.

It's not Ida Vitale or Vilariño, but there is something strong about them, and María Mercedes Carranza and even Mistral, Bolaño and so many others. He is a poet, the fruit of poets. Poet who reads, who sees the world. It is her, and with these verses she makes a voice that flows, like a river. After a while without speaking, I decided to write to him. She in Spain and I in Colombia, talked about her book, about what it is to write poetry and what it means to be a poet today in Colombia. His book will be available with Himpar Editores, who has just started his poetry collection with this beautiful title, at the new edition of the Bogotá International Book Fair that starts on April 19 and runs until May 2.

When conceiving a poem, no matter what its origin is, what does it take to give it the precise tone?

Rewrite. Read the rewritten out loud. Record it. Listen to it. Reread it. Let time pass. Change the necessary words. Hang the texts on the wall. Again and again. In a loop. Let time pass. Resume. Read the texts hanging on the wall. Cross out words. Look at those texts from afar.

How do you name fear? How do you know what its rhythm is?

In “Pink tongue out, blind cat” I worked the fear of death with a humor that hurts. The multiplication of cells produces a language of acceleration, everything is constantly moving. I am also interested in changes in the axes of the organs of the bodies.

What is felt in the bones, how is it materialized in writing?

I have read voices that come to that place, “what is felt in the bones”, transcribed them, learned them, sucked them, macerated. Then I stuck out my tongue.

The fate of those who become a poet, as well as those who become a painter or carpenter, is too uncertain. What are the paths that poetry has when you decide to take it as the engine of life?

I would say that one tries to revolve around one's passion. Like a dervish, or a spinning top.

Let the road be the turn.

What is it here that is similar, in terms of concerns, to previous books? Are these verses vomited?

I believe that what is “similar” in “God is also a dog”, “The illiterate” and “Pink tongue out, blind cat” is a language project. I am interested in capturing the vital forces and the violence that go through them. On that path I have found the animal as a drive that allows me to expand, from the sensation, the sense of the human in an illiterate language.

Until now I have never vomited writing. For me, writing has nothing to do with vomiting. “Pink tongue out, blind cat” is not a linear text and has a fabric that points, say, to a choral structure. More than a collection of poems, it is a great poem in which a blind cat appears and disappears and goes to bed with a fat belly. This is where disease, technology, death, feminine, violence and poetry appear as a language that spreads, like a stain of honey on the mat.

Was it difficult to sit down and edit the book? Were there any particular episodes?

Himpar is a publishing house that proposes a community of dialogue about literature at all levels: a collective reading of the manuscript, the transition from text to layout, with great care, to dissemination. I say community because there are six editors who appoint, according to the project, an editor who leads it. In this case I worked with Ana Cecilia Calle who is a reader with a strong eye on each verse, an interlocutor who has literature in her head, a caretaker of the work.

What about the direction that poetry is taking today in Colombia? Sometimes it seems to be something of a few, and almost always the same with the same ones.

Well, I see a panorama of independent publishers that distribute their books in bookstores - also independent ones - and at the country's fairs, very interesting. It is a space that allows different poetic voices, with risky editions. There is a constant programming of poetry readings in alternative spaces. There you can listen to poets who are starting to write, alongside poets who already have a work in progress. There is an attitude of listening and reading of the proposals that appear. There are projects that, in addition, are committed to encouraging the reading of poetry. I see, on the contrary, a boiling space.

Finally, was there a pink tongue outside? Did the cat go blind?

What do you think?

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