Automatically translated from Basque, translation may contain errors. More information here. Elhuyarren itzultzaile automatikoaren logoa

"The key is in the question, in the pure question."

  • Rakel Pardo Pérez (Urdazubi, 1995) has turned to the base that we share you, me and all the people around us to focus his first poetry book: humanity. What does it mean to be human? What gives us existence and what can we do with what has been given to us? The interaction between individuals, companionship and the relationship with the world around us are some of the issues that brings us to the table, among others, Egurats zabaletako no nominaezinak (Maiatz, 2024). We have met with the writer to learn the origin of the questions that poems receive.
Aintzane Ariztegi / ARGIA CC-BY-SA
Aintzane Ariztegi / ARGIA CC-BY-SA

It's the first full poetry book you've published to your name Unnamable from Egurats. How did the first seed of work come about?
The tour started a long time ago. A day when I met Luzien Etxezaharreta, the head and coordinator of the editorial Maiatz, we started talking about poetry from the very beginning. I shared my poems with him, and he started a kind of journey. From the very beginning, I was very confident in my poetry, and proof of that is that those poems began to appear in Maiatz magazine. That was quite a few years ago, ten easy.

The book's proposal has always been on the table, but neither at that time nor in the future did I feel it was the time. So far.

And how has the process of creating this work been?
I met Luzien around April last year and told him some poems that I felt stronger or made sense by being together. I came to the conclusion that maybe there was a book. So the book project began. Therefore, most poems have been created earlier, and throughout that year it focused on the elaboration of each one of them: changing words, changing the form... Delving into each poem. New poems also emerged in the process, but most of them have already been written in advance.

Has it been a solitary process or have you had friends nearby?
The two things. It's been very lonely, but I've had my friends close by, advising them. It is necessary.

When I wrote him to interview him, from the very beginning he thanked me, just for reading the book, because he says it is a “difficult job”. Have you received this message from outside?
Yeah, well, that always comes out to me: when people read the book, I'm inclined to thank them, I don't know if it's new, because in that I'm new or ... But I'm aware that reading is difficult. I think people have a certain fear of poetry, a kind of mistrust. It's understandable, because poetic language brings you to an abstract world, to new worlds, and perhaps to worlds that we feel distant. I think anybody can read poetry, but to get into poetic language, you need some long-term commitment, because you also learn to read poetry. I have also had such an experience: I have read several authors and have not understood anything, because it is too abstract or I have not understood the message. That is what causes frustration as a reader. But then I realized that the question was, precisely, reading: reading and reading, because once you read a poetry book you won't get too much; there are two, three readings, you really need to go deeper.

Aintzane Ariztegi / ARGIA CC-BY-SA

A poem says that the book is "a hypothesis that will never land", as it is a way to throw ideas and delve into thought. Why does Innominable Poetry use open atmospheres?
I believe that the book has a fundamental desire: that the reader appropriate his human condition. Do an exercise and become aware. This condition is directly related to some spaces of life, with direct connection with these innominable spaces. There is an impossibility, because they are innominable spaces and the resulting discomfort, always resurrected, we cannot approach them.

I would say that there is in life, as the title emphasizes some unnominable spaces, which have been related to mystery, and which have a particularity: two forces can be found in them, the force of attraction and the force of distancing. The force of attraction generates the desire to live, the motor, the passion ... And it channels the meaning of life. But there's also a force of repellency, of course, because the unnamed don't want to be named. And the resulting frustration. This post has been created in this environment, in the field of questions. There makes sense the book: in the question. The key is in the question, in the pure question.

There is a paradox that can define the book: the question seeks a constant answer, that is the essence of the question, but at the same time the question, being so, does not want to lose its character of question through the answer. It may seem absurd, but it is fundamental in the context of the book and in this field of questions.

The goal is to build one's own sense, but not so much in a solitary sense, but also in the collective.

"I think people are afraid of poetry."

Writing also comes with a “sigh that makes the chains slip.” The word and action go hand in hand in this work: the word has the ability to change the way of being and doing.
This is related to the way to reach the previously mentioned non-denominable spaces. And that is, although we know that videos don't have any direction, that doesn't make sense to them. Like life: we're here, we're alive, we don't know what we're doing too well, but that doesn't make sense of it. On the contrary, you give it to it.

This is also a challenge, since the book does not offer assertions, as it does not give a closed path to the reader. The human being feels weak in such circumstances and today is more easily, because we need to have everything focused. And it's also a challenge, because it requires immobility and silence. You have to be aware that you have to have that attitude. That is the intention, that of orienting towards that position.

As for the form of poems, small and concrete scenes are used to find meaning to more general ideas.
I think it is important for the reader to go from concrete to abstract and from abstract to concrete. You have to have a land in the poem and then go to the idea and come back; I always move in that game. You have to step on the ground to understand the poem, to feel the body in it.

On the other hand, these are scenes that I live, because the book has the axis in me, but I think it doesn't stop in me, that there has been a process of liberation, to try to understand the world.

There is a collective, a present humanity, that contains the poetic voice.
This condition has two main axes: that we have the same origin and that we constantly seek meaning to life, be it conscious or unconscious. Therefore, this book of poems does not collect as many identities, but tries to overcome them in some way and seeks an answer in something that goes beyond identity. It's a trend that I relate to characters: to the individual, to humanity and to a genealogy.

Aware of the influence of the collective in oneself, the book is also a voice that wants to build itself. Writing also has something to do with that.
No doubt, and that is of great importance in the book. I try to emphasize the influence of the collective on us and us in the collective, because it is bilateral. This is directly related in the book to another very central theme: the border. The first poem is spoken from the first moment of the border, from the moment of delivery, and what it means: when the child is born, the world has done so, it has materialized through space. “Space has defined you,” he says. And of course it has defined you, but it's not enough: that's what happens, but then, for the being that's in that body to turn into being, it needs the look of the other. “I am looked at, therefore, I am.” This will fill this being with existence. The gaze is of vital importance. But there's a process, a rupture and a change in total perception when we get to adulthood, because it seems that suddenly the other's gaze is a threat, it generates a point of discomfort. But the look, which is what fills the void of existence, how will the threat be? I think there is a need for a poetic look, a new language. So I obsessively write about my gaze.

“I believe that today we live by avoiding silence all the time, especially because it is not said to be productive or useful. It’s something we all know, but then we don’t practice silence.”

The photographs of the book invite us to look around us. How did you think of including images in poems?
The curious one was that of the images, as it was Luzien who made the initial proposal. The idea stuck in my head, and when the book came up, I realized that there were some poems that were maybe too heavy, and I thought the photos could be interesting for it: giving a place of rest between poems, between ideas.

All photos are in black and white and in skin. That was a decision made from the very beginning, because I thought that the inner world is not understood in color, but through contrasts, through games of lights. I wanted to maintain some coherence with that level of thought.

Photographs also want to have a poetic sense in the book, and they want to have a window in which to read and see what look there is on that horizon.

Aintzane Ariztegi / ARGIA CC-BY-SA

Along with the photographs, the changing form of the poems can give a cyclical structure to the work: Short poems that come with “pauses”, prose poems, dialogue scripts… Is the structuring you’ve searched for?
Yes. It had a purpose: to awaken a knowledge of the book. We have said before that you should read a book over and over again to learn what we are reading. I believe that the reader should be offered some kind of axis or anchor point to be supported. Like in life. When we know a person, we take care of the forms, we're not so present in the content. But then, as we dig deeper into knowledge, there's a safe space there. And I think it also happens with books: knowing the book, opening it up, and once it's there, we can begin to internalize what we're reading.

Conversation scripts use a certain dialectic to introduce the book's themes. Why this format?
I understand poetry as dialogue, and I pull out the poems from conversations often, even in that format. It is a colloquium and there is a way of attracting the reader, which has been unintentionally searched, but which makes all sense. In a dialectical movement, things feel closer and with a more friendly level of language, the same thing. So it's a way to tell the reader: “You are here, you are part of this book.”

The book also sees the body, although it seems that it is linked to the ideas.La idea is that through this body the reader understands that this is not only something between the book and the writer, but also he has
a responsibility in the content that is given. This radically changes the reading.

Therefore, you want the reader to generate their own range of meanings from their own texts.
Yes, that's the goal of the book: to provide a space for the reader to develop their sense.

In fact, the redefinition of concepts has a lot of weight in the book. The border, the illusion, the desert, the slope -- they appear over and over again.
They say that every writer has his own vocabulary, his own universe, his own language. I sometimes see from the outside that there is such a thing, that there is a vocabulary that is related, perhaps with an idea of presence: working presence through a dictionary so that the person can materialize and become aware of the relationship.

Maybe silence is the most important of these recurring concepts. How do we understand silence and what is the innominable thing about Open Atmospheres?
I'm constantly looking for silence to be a central place in the book. It is not a silence contrary to boredom, but a silence of ideas or a void of thought. From there begins the perception of the border, and that is necessary to then jump into the world of knowledge, to open connections with new worlds. That's the key.

I believe that today we live by avoiding silence all the time, especially because they say it is not productive or useful. It's something we all know, but then we don't practice silence in everyday life. And I think it opens many doors, even if we don't have to look for any utility: silence, in itself. That's when it starts to run out.


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