Orlando Mondragón has joined the list of winners of the LOEWE FOUNDATION International Poetry Prize, becoming the first poet under the age of 30 to win the award. We spoke to him to get to know him better.
Where do you usually write? Is there a place that particularly inspires you?
I would love to continue using pencil and paper when I write, as I always have, but lately I’ve been jotting things down in my cell phone in an attempt to land that elusive and capricious fish called inspiration. I’m always looking to see if anything bites and when it does, I have to set the hook regardless of where I may be.
As for editing poems, I usually do that at night. I sit in my room, at my desk, sheltered by my books.
Many people think of poetry as a means of escaping from reality. Do you agree or do you think poetry somehow takes the temperature of what is happening in our personal lives and in society as a whole?
Both, actually. I turn to poetry when I need a break from my daily life. It’s my safe place. But then, there are certain poems and poets whose work hits me hard, whose verses become the most acute of magnifying glasses, allowing us to examine the current climate.
Talking about what is happening in the world is, in my opinion, inherent to writing. In a way, a poet’s task is to take the tribe’s words and reassign them with new meaning before giving them back. To do that you must keep your eyes and ears open.
Even on a personal level, the world influences our thoughts and actions. The way in which we connect with others is constantly changing. For example, falling in love today is very different to what falling in love was like in the 15th century. What’s more, it’s very different to what it was like 50 years ago. And this is reflected in poetry. In that respect, I like to think of poems as the annals where the history of thought and emotions is written.
What inspires or drives you to write?
Pedro Mairal says that writing requires a bit of sleepwalking, and I have to agree. I think of inspiration as an intuition that you suddenly become aware of, a preverbal emotion that finds its words. And if you don’t follow your intuition, you lose it. To be more specific, I write about the things that touch me deeply. It can be an emotion, something I saw when I was out and about, a personal experience or even someone else’s, a word I hear in passing that triggers a memory; I don’t know, many things.
Has sharing personal experiences through your work made you feel emotionally naked vis-à-vis your readers?
Undoubtedly. Regardless of the distance you try to establish between what you write and your private life, there is always a trace of who you are in your writing; something that is revealed, and exposed to others. And, of course, this makes us feel vulnerable. But if, as a poet, you don’t allow yourself to feel vulnerable, then who does?
Do you think of the pace of modern life as a poet’s ally or enemy?
As an enemy. Reading poetry requires a different kind of concentration. At least in my case. This means pausing the mind in order to observe each word and each line of verse. If I rush through a poem, it won’t speak to me; but if I go back to it and I reread it taking my time, I am able to find its rhythm, its internal beat, and then I’ll find myself in total and complete awe.
Elena Medel, winner of the 2013 Young Poets Award, presented Peachtree City. “I recommend you read Mario’s book without thinking about his age. Of course it’s remarkable that he is only 17 and that he wrote it when he was 16, but it seems rather unfair to reduce such intelligent, generous, and brilliant writing to a number. It is an exceptional book,” she said during the presentation. A book that, in her words, “is about poetry’s identity and personal value, and its ability to forge who we are. Mario’s poetry is a lifeline allowing us to face the world”. Mario Obrero celebrated the fact that attendees “made time for poetry” in their schedules and also thanked the LOEWE Foundation and Elena Medel. According to the poet, Peachtree City is the expression of “poetry as a place we all have in common where empathy exists, allowing us to poetically identify with others on the basis of hope, solidarity and a deep awareness linked to beauty and memory”. During his speech, Mario Obrero pointed out that “adhering to poetic logic could be one of poetry’s natural roles. Poetic logic is neither the logic of reality, nor the logic of what happens in our day to day, nor the logic that guides the dominant discourses that wear us down. That said, he does not believe that poetic logic is “less honest, less legitimate, or less licit; on the contrary, there are moments during which it is aware of what happens in the shadows, of things that, our everyday reality, in its clumsiness, is unable to perceive”.
This full academic-year residency allows participants to fully immerse themselves in their music, literature, visual art or plastic art projects, whilst interacting with artists whose specialty may lie in other disciplines, all in an open and highly productive environment. Javier Vela and Raquel Vázquez are two LOEWE Young Poet’s Award recipients who earned one of these residency scholarships in the past. In addition to enjoying an ideal setting to hone their creativity and do research work, participants are supervised by Antonio Gala Foundation tutors. Ben Clark, also a winner of the LOEWE Young Poet’s Award, is one of those tutors, a fact that helps strengthen the bonds between older and younger generations of Spanish-speaking poets.
