Biography of the only coastal man who has achieved the National Poetry Prize and who died at the end of last year.
His shoulders were broad and his eyes were noble. In the tropics, and sometimes in the moor, he wore loose, large plaid shirts. He walked slowly, a little leaning forward, at least that is how I remember him on his last visit to Montería in 2017. He was not full of speech, he did not raise his voice, his laugh was occasional. He was born in Santa Marta on April 6, 1945, but he lived most of his time in Bogotá. Fundamentally he was a poet, although he had achieved a just name with the novel and historical research. His name was and is called Álvaro Miranda, and so far he is the only person from the coast who has achieved the National Poetry Prize that the University of Antioquia announces. He obtained it in 1982 with the collection of poems Los Escritos de Don Sancho Jimeno. (We recommend: Poets join the strike).
His novel La risa del cuervo won, in 1984, the first prize in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the call made by the University of Belgrano. This same novel, rewritten for several years and reprinted in Bogotá by Thomas de Quincey Editores, won the Pedro Gómez Valderrama Award, convened by Colcultura in 1992. In addition, among others, it has published the collection of poems Indiada (1971), the anthological compilation Simulation of a kingdom (1996), Colombia, the golden path of wheat (2000), León de Greiff in the country of Bolombolo (2004), A corpse to arm (2007), Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and the fire of a life (2008) . In 2010, he traveled to Mexico as an intern and wrote the novel Muchachas como rosas , which remains unpublished and has as a reference the life of the Aztec poet Gilberto Owen. (We recommend: More by José Luis Garcés on poetry).
Almost never among his friends and relatives did I hear him call by his full name, but rather by his aesthetic work. Always: the poet Miranda. And he got used to it. Poet Miranda: and the man reacted to the call. He did it naturally, of course, that was his real first name. It seems that since the day of his birth. Perhaps his official name was very long, Álvaro José Miranda Hernández, and fate assigned him another: short, quick and true: the poet Miranda. But by contrast, since Tropicomachy , his verse is long and conversational, with convincing foliage, to name what deserves to be mentioned. Which does not prevent you from highlighting the wonder or beauty of the speech. Language of ancient times, of the jungle, of a real and mythological animal, of abundant rain among the foliage, of people who complain because they have lost their nobility, of women who denounce because in front of their eyes they have burned their children. All his poetic language is touched by historical discourse. Since history was prehistoric, until the moment in which history becomes contemporary. Having read this way, it could be said that in the poet Miranda, history sought and found another channel to express itself.
Follow the news of El Espectador on Google NewsSimulation of a Kingdom ( Miranda, Álvaro. Simulation of a Kingdom. Bogotá. Thomas de Quincey Editores. 1996)
In 1996 the poet Miranda published Simulation of a Kingdom , an anthology that makes the poetic journey of his work from 1966 to 1995. In this compilation, the texts Tropicomaquia are grouped; Indiada; Four from Lebrija; The Writings of Don Sancho Jimeno; and Simulation of a Kingdom . This compendium, which is the one we want to address in this reminder text, offers a broad overview of what Miranda’s poetry is, its scope, its successes, its searches and, ultimately, the forceful burden of his word. The word in him is an informal weapon and he experiments with it. His poetry is the product of those trilogical encounters between technique, imagination and history, in which language is a synthesis of an I accuse-I betray-I poetize. And she does everything without shame and beauty, as when she titled: “LANDSCAPES WHICH THE PIGEONS FLYING DREAM IN THE BALCONIES OF THE TOWN, WHERE A WOMAN WITHOUT A FACE BUT OF PURIFIED BEAUTY CONTEMPLATES THE MEMORIES IN THE INSTANT IN WHICH THE SOLDIERS THEY MARCH TO THE FIELDS OF CHUQUISACA, WHEN LIFE IS FILLED WITH AROMAS AND THE ROADS GET ENOUGH … (Thus, with a capital letter).
The diversity of events is presented in the poet Miranda with a freshness of chlorophyll, guarded by clocks that in a Gothic dome insist on marking the time of history. There is a language of poetic jungle, of sleepy downpours, of animals learning to play drums, of ancient narrative, and of men who show up spontaneously to defy death. Here the poetic word loses the transcendentality that is traditional to it. It is transgressed. It is desecrated. It is made to fall from heaven to earth. It entangles him with laughter. It is reread and devoured because in it the pleasure of the text is given.
The reality of the time is felt in the poems. The huge and victorious titles, significant and true, characterize his work, and precede and complete the essence of what can be called verses, prose or texts, which are a beautiful thread of history, nature and metaphysics. And all to narrate the Indian, the black, the hard mud of rebellion. For example, there are Tropicomaquia, Indiada, Cuatro de Lebrija and that marvel of history that are The Writings of Don Sancho Jimeno, a Spanish-Castilian frustrated defender of Cartagena in 1679. Defeated but victorious. There is a voice that mocks Spain and its hierarchies, that hurts at its affront. That betrays, for example, the cornucopia of Felipe II. That remembers the albatross that was presented to Jorge Zalamea when on April 9, 1948, he was taking over the National Radio. Benkos Bioho’s rage in proclaiming the revolution. The prayer of Carlos III when he learned of the defeat and the taking of Bocachica Castle by the Baron de Pointis. To do this, the poet Miranda structures his book by resorting to multiple resources, some of anachronistic formal extraction, others of clear and ancient linguistic and literary origin. Through its pages pass the Spanish golden age, the babbling of the original Castilian, the typical expressions that led to the language of Cervantes and the poetics of Quevedo, and the audacity of heteronyms.
The existence of the Caribbean is a constant presence in the poet Miranda. It arises inevitably, and does not navigate the waters of the spontaneous; it is part of the existence of the poet, and of the hollows of his memory. The Caribbean, its biology and its anthropology are breathed in each verse, All its poetry is poured into its fauna, its flora, its gastronomy, its customs, its ghosts. From the iguanas to the patacones, from the goleros to the egg arepa, from the alcatraz to the exotic truck driver who writes verses, from the dirges that are said when one is truly in love to the sad dirges as a result of political and human misfortune. of the black Jorge Eliécer, from the words of the poet Julio Flórez when observing the mortuary remains of Carmencita Jánica to the firm notice that informs that the food here is tastier than that of there, from the applause to the spell of a casabe cake to the reproach for letting one’s cultural hinges wobble. This is a hymn to that culture, to those roots that lie in the bones and that differentiate it from the rest but, at the same time, insert it into the known and perhaps unknown world. Feeling that we belong to the land where we were born does not exclude us from feeling that we belong to the universal mole.
Writers Germán Arciniegas, Álvaro Mutis, Enrique Molina, Ariel Castillo, Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda, Emiro Santos, Ramón Bacca, José Luis Díaz-Granados, among many others, spoke about the work of the poet Miranda. His voice as a poet and workshop leader was heard in the main cities of the country. As a lecturer and reader, he was invited to Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, the United States, Uruguay and the Dominican Republic.
The poet Miranda died in Bogotá on October 9, 2020, but not before, demonstrating his humor and sarcasm, recommending in writing to the carpenter in charge of making the coffin that he choose a good wood, with an excellent aroma, to preserve the fragrance of his bones, and that he should be careful with the use of nails so that nothing would disturb the tranquility of his silence, which is not eternal, since he continues to speak to us through his works that teach us the wine of its validity and its validity.
* Writer, essayist, university professor. Director of the cultural newspaper “El Túnel2, from Montería, Colombia. His stories have been translated into Slovak, English, French and German. His most recent book is “Sociological and Literary Analects”. E .: [email protected]
