This has been a good year, a year of intense work, of many readings, of writing poems, of articles, of learning. As much as one can learn when one works alongside a great team, whose teachings flow naturally and we learn to tune our ears and listen to the responses of the women who write poetry in our State. Close to fifty poets interviewed in three years. From those who were born in the fifties of the last century, to the young millennials. And a few that go back further and whose stories we have been discovering, because there are those who have told us, for example, about the sister of the poet Salvador Gallardo Dávalos and when we went to her house we discovered Marta Gallardo, the woman who happy and proud showed us the golden flower that she won at the Zacatecas Floral Games in 1960. She was a young woman who had the audacity to send her sonnets “To the death”, without mentioning it to anyone. Neither his father nor his brother poets. It is easy to imagine that she wanted to hide her talent in a masculine environment, which did not give her a space for her own poetic expression. Or perhaps she herself, she limited herself and directed all her creativity to be the excellent educator that she was, her wife and her mother. But there remains their pride, as remains the emotion with which each writer has told us about their beginnings in writing, their love for books, their life decisions that allow them to build their own room, as Virginia Wolf said and then the We see stealing hours of sleep to write and daring to present their poems, inviting the public to read aloud. This whole world has opened up to me, thanks to the work team of which I am a part. We call ourselves SOUL, coincidentally. Lupita Montoya, my partner for so many years at UAA, Beatriz Córdova, a hard-working and cordial person, Arlette Luévano, from whom I learn and appreciate new things every day. I have to say that I owe him the return to poetry as a form of expression, also valid at this stage of my life and that has immense value for me. Now that the compilation of the few poems I have written in my life appears, with the title of “The times of the snail”, each text will lean towards the people who have wrapped it: the words of Arlette, the Prologue by Liliana Muñoz, the cover by Pilar Palacio, the editorial care of Rocío Castro.
cup of suns One more year of sharing the desire to read, the fact of writing, the nights of conversation. This year Geny Medina, educator, former student, joined. She joined the group formed by Edith Díaz, Rosalba and Lulú What is behind the perseverance of these ladies who had never written anything and who have now each developed a story, and have set out to tell it clearly, with an inspired desire to share a worked, entertaining, and coherent text? Surely they are grateful and motivated to undertake new projects. The one that will begin in January is the literary writing of a topic together with a relative, son, grandson or nephew.
The projects have continuity, the interviews, the work of the transcriptions, the analysis of the data, of the words, the reflection on everything that we have been discovering. The panorama of creativity and working alone or in small teams is a panorama that stimulates us and allows us to continue advancing.
Finally, a few words for some of the books I want to read next year, because we read to rest as Yadira Cuéllar, one of the poets, said. This Christmas I received the book I ordered as a gift: We need to talk about Kevin. whose story is the basis of the script of the homonymous film. The tape impressed me and I decided that I wanted to delve into the subject of the mother’s relationship with the psychopathic son. I will read too “Mexico, the novel” by Pedro Ángel Palau, one of the best narrators of historical novels in Mexico. Its plot covers five centuries in the history of Mexico City and its characters. I will also read “The years” by Annie Ernaux, because according to the reviews, it is an autobiography written in a distanced way and focused on rescuing some aspects of French society, from the forties to the present day. I like the scheme and I want to explore the narrative resources of the French writer, whose novels, in addition to making her worthy of the Nobel Prize, allow us to notice the paths that her autobiographical writing has been following in recent years.
I would like to hear from you, dear readers. If someone wants to tell me what they did this year that is about to end, or what their projects are for this 2023, they can send me an email. Congratulations.