The Mexican Cristina Rivera Garza (Matamoros, 1964), living in Barcelona for just over two years – now alternating with Berlin, where she has obtained a writing scholarship – has just won the Pulitzer Prize for memoirs in the US. for ‘The invincible summer of Liliana’ (2021), the book in which she narrates the disappearance of her sister, a victim of sexist violence at the hands of her ex-boyfriend. Her latest novelty here is ‘My name is a body that is not there’ (Lumen), a work that compiles all of her poetry books from the late 90s to 2015.
What does it mean to receive such an important award for the English translation of the book where you narrate the tragic death of your sister Liliana?
Well, I spent thirty years in the US, and it’s actually a book that I wrote directly in English. Then I made the Spanish version. If awards are useful for anything, especially one like this, it is to draw attention to a book, hopefully this attention will be great enough to move and invite the Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office to act, where for more than The papers of the investigation into the alleged feminicide Ángel González Ramos and his possible death under the nickname Michel Angelo Giovanni that occurred in southern California on May 2, 2020 have been there for two years. All the information is there. I hope they finally decide to do their job. There is much to do regarding justice in Mexico. One of the many reasons why femicides continue to exist is the high number of impunity. A feminicide in Mexico knows that she has a good chance of getting her way and nothing happens to her. And, on the other hand, she knows that very often she can count on the complicity of families, friends, neighbors, co-workers, who instead of reporting it will turn a blind eye and prefer not to commit themselves.
You are very well known in Spain, but there are many who will not know that you are a poet.
Not in Mexico either! I have been publishing these poetry collections in a very discreet way on independent labels. The first book I published was poetry and it has continued alongside the slightly more notable publication of novels, short stories and essays.
His use of new technologies, artificial intelligence machines, fonts… refer to the calligrams and poems that the avant-garde created.
Everything is technology: the sonnet, the Alexandrians, etc. Many times, when you think of poetry, you think of an abstract production. And in these books gathered here, there is a concern or an emphasis on the different mediations that must be gone through to produce poetry: pencil and paper, the typewriter, mechanics, the computer… There are poems here made with these language cutting machines, cut-up engine machines, which are like the great-great-grandfathers of artificial intelligence. What interests me is to make it clear that this does not arise from nowhere, that this is not a direct download of the imagination, that there is a material relationship with these mediating technologies.
Their use of those word-cutting machines produces syncopated, as if more abrupt, language…
In the collection of poems ‘Death gives me by Anne-Marie Bianco’ (2007), which in fact was the last chapter of the novel ‘Death gives me’ (2007), much of the work had to do with violence and that is why I was interested in the idea of ??the slash, the cut. The entire reflection, guided by Alejandra Pizarnik, is the difference between prose and verse. And this was most evident from the cuts produced by the cut-up engine machine.
Then there are communal poems, poetry as a collective practice.
I am interested in that plural moment of writing. The first book that appears here, ‘La másmine’ (1998), could be the example of a confessional poetry, of the self, and yet it already contains medical diagnoses with the non-prestigious language of medicine, and there are other books in the that there is the non-prestigious language of the event note. I call upon these other ways of producing language, which legitimately fit into the category of poetry.
Love and eroticism appear very intensely, sometimes in their negative part, related to violence or disappointment.
A continuity of all these books has to do with the body. The vulnerable body, the broken body, the attacked body, but also the joyful body and, above all, the gendered body. It’s not an abstract body flying around, right? Not a figment of the imagination, but a body crossed by multiple social, cultural and other forces. And, of course, I believe that enjoyment, connection, hugs, etc., also respond to conflict, respond to various inequalities and respond to structural conditions that at least I am interested in taking into account: there are hospitals, there is illness. , prisons…
How do you integrate quotes from Bob Dylan, Vallejo, Rimbaud, Shepard? Let’s see if they are going to sue her for copyright.
Street! Street! That would be terrible. Well, it’s another part of this plural consideration of writing practice. I believe that it is better to know that we are inscribed in traditions than to believe that we are inventing the black thread. It is better to go to the appointment, and have a subversive desire. This exists, I am part of this conversation and I want to do something different in each case.
There are some poems that show the plot, they are like a kind of scheme, the mechanisms of literary construction.
The third book, ‘Have You Ever Been to the North Sea?’ It coincided with the golden moment of blogs. There is a very special enjoyment there, a product of this very intense relationship that I had at the time with the blog, obviously that is now an antediluvian product, no one uses it anymore. But the photos can still be seen there on that blog, in the link I attached. This blog technology allowed us to see the relationship that exists between the one who writes and the one who reads. But also, of course, one of the things I learned from this book is that I have fortunately been many writers. What horror, what a shame to have been just a writer all these years.
And there is a game with his prose or his novels, communicating vessels.
This book is like a kind of X-ray of the other books I have published. The experimentations here have been wilder, but there are many ties, for example with my book about Liliana. There is a Spanish doctoral student who has just published an essay about me titled ‘Liliana was always there’.
‘Newton’s disk’ are aphorisms.
Now, work with the long verse, or with the aphorism, or with the short paragraph, and think of the poem as a form of essay, in this case about color. The conflagration of genres is another point that runs through all these books.
And he treats his mother’s illness…
That is at the beginning, the mother’s body and then very non-prestigious, very everyday diseases, from the flu to the fungus that appears on the nail of the big toe. And it seemed important to me to make this connection with the language of Wikipedia and the Internet, which I use as a hypochondriac to consult about diseases. It is incredible that something so intimate and personal uses this completely public language, that’s where the search goes. Poetry allows you to elevate that vulgar experience of looking at one’s own illnesses on the Internet. My body is unique but I need a language that belongs to everyone. There is a tension there from which poetry can emerge.
Many genres appear…
I recently read the novel ‘Mandíbula’ by Mónica Ojeda. There are incredible poetry and language exercises there. Poetry can appear in verse and it can appear in prose, in decalogues or in aphorisms.
What is your relationship with Barcelona like?
It’s intense, it’s wonderful, it’s constant and I’m going to be moving between Berlin and Barcelona for the rest of the year. I arrived more than two years ago and settled in a wonderful place, very central, in Eixample, where they made a completely beautiful pedestrian area, through Consell de Cent and Girona. What I still have to do is learn Catalan well.
But you understand it well, right?
Yes, but talking about it seems like a small courtesy to me. When you are in a place, you try to learn basic things. But it costs more when you speak a language that everyone understands. I like Barcelona, ??which, like the border cities in Mexico, mixes two languages ??and that forces you to always question the naturalness of language in general. That suits the writing very well.
What big difference is there between poetry and prose?
Poetry announces to us that there is something beyond that is unspeakable, that is untouchable, it is the enigma. And you’re going to have to go through that alone. Those who read poetry are at peace with that. Those who read narrative need a conclusion. That’s the big difference.
Well, that’s almost religious.
Poetry is a transcendence.
