CAMAGÜEY.- For the Poetical Statements notebook, Aleido Rodríguez Cabrera won the Silvestre de Balboa City Award, from Camagüey, to which authors of 34 notebooks sent from ten Cuban provinces aspired.
“They are poetic statements about the facts of life, the tears, the pains, the problems that happen in the world and the poet has the gift of expressing. They are the eternal themes of poetry: love, loneliness, death”, said the winner to the press.
The jury, made up of Odalys Leyva (Camagüey), Luis Paz (Mayabeque) and Ricardo Riverón (Villa Clara), wrote in the minutes that "poems sometimes leave you breathless", and the depth of thoughtfulness and emotion shakes " without disputing leading roles in semantics”.
They also praised it as the group with the best resolved structural logic, and although the formal risk assumed is not new, he emerged victorious from the experiment with heterodox versification.
In this sense, the winner explained that he did not do his verses “in the normal little box of the tenth. They seem free verses because that is the present. I looked for a slightly daring language to express feelings”.
Locating Aleido, geographically speaking, has a lot to do with him. He was born between two mountains in Boquerón, Florencia, but in 1958 Ciego de Ávila was not a province, therefore, he identifies himself with the historical Camagüey. Here he did not lead a literary life, he began in Havana and has developed in Las Tunas, where he lives.
“Poetry is written from heartbreak, not from happiness. When the body feels the blow, the spirit rises up and protests, or at least asks questions”, emphasized the author of Detrás del muro se suena (Ed. Sanlope, 2006).
In accordance with what is established in the bases of the Silvestre de Balboa City Award, he receives 20,000 pesos and Editorial Ácana will publish Poetical Statements in printed format.
“I am very grateful to Camagüey. I have always loved this land ”, Aleido emphasized shortly after remembering his beginnings:“ I wrote my first poems at the age of 10 and I earned a beating from my father, a peasant who did not understand that I wrote verses ”.
The jury also awarded First Mention to Las patrias del sueño, by Jorge Luis Arias Reina (pseudonym Nadie) and Mention to Juego de G(i)os, by Adalberto Parra Pérez (pseudonym Albatros).
The award ceremony took place at the literary café La Comarca, during the space La terraza campesina with the performance of poets, sudden artists and especially Eneida Sosa, known as the Lady of the Tonada.
The "Silvestre de Balboa" is summoned by the Provincial Book Center, the Ignacio Agramonte House of Culture and the Municipal Directorate of Culture of Camagüey. They received works from Havana, Matanzas, Cienfuegos, Villa Clara, Ciego de Ávila, Las Tunas, Holguín, Granma, Santiago de Cuba and the host territory.
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez