The Mexican Cristina Rivera Garza (Matamoros, 1964), who has been living in Barcelona for a little over two years - now alternates with Berlin, where she has obtained a writing grant - has just won the Pulitzer Prize in the USA of memoirs for El invencible verano de Liliana (2021), the book in which he narrates the disappearance of his sister, a victim of sexist violence at the hands of her ex-boyfriend. His latest novel here is Me llamo cuerpo que no está (Lumen), a work that collects all his books of poetry from the late nineties until 2015.
What does it mean to receive such an important award, for the English translation of the book in which he narrates the tragic death of his 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 version in Spanish. If awards are for anything, especially one like this, it's to draw attention to a book. Hopefully this attention will be big enough to move and invite the Prosecutor's Office of Mexico City to act, where for more than two years there have been the papers of the investigation into the alleged feminicide Ángel González Ramos and his possible death nicknamed Michel Angelo Giovanni occurred in Southern California in 2020. Hopefully they finally decide to do their job. One of the reasons why femicides continue to exist is the high number of impunity. A femicide in Mexico knows he has a high probability of getting away with it and nothing will happen to him. And, quite often, you can count on the complicity of families, friends, neighbors or work colleagues who, instead of reporting, will turn a blind eye.
His use of new technologies for poetry, artificial intelligence machines, typography... refer to the calligrams and poems of the avant-garde.
Everything is technology: so is the sonnet, the Alexandrians, et cetera. 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 through which poetry must be produced: the pen and paper, the typewriter, the mechanics, the computer... Here is poems made with these cut-up engine machines, which are like the great-grandfathers of artificial intelligence. What interests me is to make it clear that this does not arise out of nowhere, it is not a direct discharge of the imagination, there is a material relationship with these mediating technologies.
His use of these word cutters produces syncopated language, more abrupt...
In the poem collection La muerte me da por Anne-Marie Bianco (2007), much of the work had to do with violence and that is why I was interested in the idea of the cut. The entire reflection, guided by Alejandra Pizarnik, is the difference between prose and verse. And this was more evident from the cuts produced by the machine.
Then there are communal poems, poetry as a collective practice.
I am interested in the plural moment of writing. The first book that appears here, La más mía (1998), could be an example of confessional poetry, of the self, and yet it already contains medical diagnoses with the not-so-prestigious language of medicine, and there are other books in which there is the not-so-prestigious language of the event note. I call these other ways of producing language, which legitimately fit the title of poetry.
Love and eroticism appear there in a very intense way, sometimes in the negative part, related to violence or disappointment.
A continuation of all these books has to do with the body. The vulnerable body, the broken body, the assaulted body, but also the joyful body and, above all, the gendered body. It's not an abstract body flying around, is it? It is not a product of imagination, but a body crossed by many social, cultural and other forces. And, of course, I believe that enjoyment, connection, embrace, etc., given that it also responds to conflict, responds to various inequalities.
How does it integrate quotes from Bob Dylan, Vallejo, Rimbaud, Shepard? Let's see if they will sue her for copyright.
Shut up, shut up! That would be terrible. I think it is better to know that we are inscribed in traditions than to believe that we are discovering garlic soup. It is better to go to the summons with a subversive longing.
He treats his mother's illness…
This is at the beginning, the mother's body and then very unprestigious, very everyday diseases, from the flu to the fungus that grows 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 resort to as a hypochondriac to consult about diseases.
How is your relationship with Barcelona?
It's intense, it's wonderful, it's constant and I'll be moving between Berlin and Barcelona for the rest of the year. I came more than two years ago and settled in a wonderful place, very central, in the Eixample, where they made a completely beautiful one for pedestrians, by Consell de Cent i Girona. What I still have to do is learn Catalan well.
You understand it well, don't you?
Yes, but talking about it seems to me a minimal detail of courtesy. When you are in a place, try to learn basic things. But it costs more when you speak a language like Spanish, which everyone understands. What I like about Barcelona is that, like the border cities in Mexico, it mixes languages and this forces you to always be questioning the naturalness of language in general. This is very good for writing.
How big is the difference 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 have to go through this alone. Those who read poetry are at peace with it. Those who read narrative need a conclusion. This is the big difference.
