Raquel Vázquez (Lugo, Spain, 1990) tells us how surprised she was when she learned she’d won the LOEWE Young Poet’s Award. “A few hours prior to receiving the phone call, I thought fleetingly about the Prize; about how much I wanted to win, yet how unlikely that possibility seemed,” she recalls. She had sent her submission encouraged by the make-up of the jury and the prestige held by both Editorial Visor and the LOEWE Foundation, but she confesses that she could have never imagined “the Prize’s enormous impact and the subsequent warm reception the book received.” She is “beyond grateful.”
Aunque los mapas —the award-winning book, which has also won the Radio Nacional de España Ojo Crítico Prize— hides much of Vazquez herself. The poet explains that writers “need to feed on memories, dreams, experiences, conversations, readings…. The words we write don’t necessarily have to tell a true story, not by a long shot, but we must always begin with our own experiences.” In order to convey truth and honesty, she adds, “the starting point is crucial because it’s what the reader will perceive; meanwhile, the amount of truth versus fiction is actually completely anecdotal.” She admits that in Aunque los mapas “there is a direct link between the personal journey that I have been on in recent years —one of reflection, disagreements, disappointments, and search— and the one the book recounts.”
Vazquez is still moved by the reaction of certain Jury members to her book: “For Gioconda Belli to highlight the way I close my poems or that my poetry is accessible yet refined is amazing. These are aspects I tend to focus on so it’s extremely gratifying when such an accomplished poet notices them,” she tells us.
La policía celeste, written by someone she “appreciates and admires” as much as Ben Clark, is the book she would choose from among previous winners as the one closest to her writing style. She also mentioned He heredado un nogal sobre la tumba de los reyes by Basilio Sánchez and Juan Antonio González Iglesias, Margo Glantz and Belli herself as the poets “who have left the biggest impression on me.”
Raquel Vázquez is already working on a new collection of poems. “There is some common ground with Aunque los mapas. Spaces, for example, still play an important role. But, as always, I try to go a step further: in the research and in the possibilities of language, both in form and in substance”. Vázquez, who likes to alternate between poetry and narrative, is working on a book of short stories and planning to get back to a novel she started writing some time ago: “I think the time has come to dive in and finish it.”
Sharing the limelight of the Prize’s 32nd edition with another woman —Aurora Luque from Almería— is nothing out of the ordinary. For Vázquez “what is significant is that it took thirty-two editions for both winners to be women. Or that, to date, only two women have won the main prize: Cristina Peri Rossi and Aurora Luque.” And, as if thinking out loud, she adds: “The current poetic scene in Spanish is extremely diverse and rich, with both men and women standing out equally. Here’s hoping that the Prize will continue reflecting the quality of poetry that is being written.”
CÁRDENO
No siempre fue el futuro ese animal magullado.
¿Cuándo perdió las alas y la risa?
¡Cuándo se marchitó su ladrido de aliento?
Pesa la herida más que la esperanza.
Y no basta la espera.
Pero tal vez sí el bálsamo
de balbucir una palabra indemne.
Aunque en este desierto cueste tanto decirla.
Aunque las referencias hayan quedado atrás.
El sueño de soñar algún día lo ileso.
Por si las jacarandas
irrumpen como puntos cardinales.
Por si la vida todavía fuera
ese árbol triste en que lucha una flor.
Raquel Vázquez
LOEWE Young Poets Award 2019
Aunque los mapas
Photo captions: Raquel Vazquez © Eduardo Fraile. Aunque los mapas, Colección Visor de Poesía.
Basilio Sánchez thanked Colinas for “the attentive and extremely generous reading” of his poems and the Jury –among whom, he said, many of his literary role models are to be found– for having awarded him with a Prize that he doesn’t want to consider “a recognition of quality or of the more or less fortunate verses within, but rather, of the spirit that spurs it, the humanistic style that drives it, that passionate confidence with which it seeks to overcome the exhaustion and disappointment that are so rampant today”. He applauded the LOEWE Foundation’s effort to “promote and preserve this important literary contest that is capable of generating, amidst the confusion and uncertainty of our time, a moral space for poetry, the humblest but also the most necessary of the manifestations of the soul”. He thanked everyone in attendance, his friends and family, and in particular, his wife and children, to whom the book is dedicated. Sanchez then spoke of the painting –by Basilio’s own father– that illustrates the book’s cover, explaining its relationship to the verses. “It’s a meditative book”, he added, “but also the field book of a naturalist who sees words as his raison d’être and who uses both poetry and the images words can conjure to question the world and how he interacts with it. These are verses written by someone who knows there is nothing more beautiful than allowing the night to convince you that everything is eternal”.
Following Bonnet’s words, the winner, Basilio Sánchez, thanked the Jury and the LOEWE Foundation and explained that he was “very grateful because this is a book that has required a personal investment of two years and it contains the most essential pieces of the literature I have been writing.” He was also extremely pleased because this award shows that there is value in writing “poetry that is intimately linked to the humanist definition of what a person is and of what it means to exist, and it defends a type of poetry that shows respect for tradition and unity”. The type of poetry that Sánchez writes, “sits at the end of a long rope that has been years in the making,” he added. “It is a source of pride for me to think that I am one of the links in this chain, having learned from the poets who are sitting here today, who I think of, without a doubt, as my teachers.” For Sanchéz, He heredado un nogal sobre la tumba de los reyes is “a meditative book, a compendium of deep thoughts.” According to the author, it is “a book written by someone who sees words as his raison d’être, as part of who he is, and who uses both poetry and the images that words can conjure to question the world and how he interacts with it. Someone who is fully aware that the society he lives in is extremely meticulous about all material things, but enormously poor when it comes to spirituality; a wallflower in the party the world is immersed in who sits in silent contemplation before the grave of things that could have been, and yet doesn’t renounce the gift of the immense.” Someone who knows, he added, “that there is nothing more beautiful than allowing the night to convince you that everything is eternal.”
