Twenty-nine poets who awaken over the word. Twenty-nine young voices who in their unease, their predictions and anomalies offer the poem amidst a world falling to pieces. That’s the wager of the anthology Amanecimos sobre la palabra, curated and selected by the poet and editor Oriette D’Angelo and published recently by the organization Team Poetero.
The selections in this anthology draw, in the words of D’Angelo, a cartography that allows us to glimpse the new means of disseminating poetry on the Internet. The twenty-nine Venezuelan poets included have as a common denominator that their texts have come to life for the first time in cyberspace and their incipient literary projects are a click away through various digital magazines that make up today’s digital ecosystem.
The anthology of young Venezuelan poets offers a journey through the most diverse registers and topics, but always under the chaotic sign of contemporaneity, the complexity of a world where utopias have failed, and the cataclysm of a dismembered country.
The name of the anthology —explains the editor in the prologue— alludes to a verse by the poet Pablo Rojas Guardia, “used as an aesthetic banner by part of the Generation of 28.” For the poet and editor the anthology is also an homage to the poet and a recognition of digital media as promoters of new literature.
The poets selected, born between 1985 and 1999, include Susan Urich, Oswaldo Flores, Liwin Acosta, Pamela Rahn, Víctor Noé, Andrea Paola Hernández and Miguel Ortiz Rodríguez, among others.
D’Angelo explains that thanks to her work as editor of the digital platform Digo.palabra.txt and to her interest in digital magazines she already knew many of the names of those that ended up forming part of the book.
“Despite knowing them, having read nearly all of them previously and recognizing their talent, I also wanted to focus on two things: the singularity of their poetic voices and that as many of Venezuela’s cities as possible be represented,” explained the editor, for whom it was important to show that the literary activities in places such as Maracaibo, Coro, Mérida and San Cristóbal are as “incredible” as those in the capital city.
The topics addressed by the young poets range from the most canonical in the Venezuelan poetic tradition, such as memory, the house, the city, the body; to those permeated by signs of the megabyte era and by less conventional structures that defy the act of reading.
For D’Angelo, “the desire to keep writing despite the lack of opportunities,” is what unites these singular voices. “All of them have interesting projects, some have magazines, participate in literary groups, organize readings and events. This generation, which includes me, ”has found it hard to start materializing their work. Very few of those included have their first book published, and it’s not because they haven’t written them, but because they depend on contests and prizes to do so,” D’Angelo assures.
The literary activities of these young poets are taking place and expanding behind computer and mobile screens. This ferment is one of the qualities D’Angelo wanted to highlight in the generation represented by the book.
She finds the interaction sparked by the Internet “interesting” in relation to poetic dissemination and creation. However she warns: “It’s quite easy to get carried away by the immediacy of the Internet. A poem getting 70 likes on Facebook doesn’t make it the poem of the century, but neither does getting 2 likes mean it’s bad. I’m not talking about those types of interactions, which are more superficial, I’m talking more about the process of dissemination, recognition and dialogue that can happen in this space between readers and writers.”
While it is an anthology, it only aims to be an “approximation” —the editor affirms—, to what’s currently happening in regards to poetry.
The book will be presented tomorrow in Caracas at Kalathos bookstore, at 12:30pm.
{ Diana Moncada, El Universal, 11 March 2017 }
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