‘Las devastaciones’ by Lina Alonso, her first book of poems, hundreds of verses dedicated to honoring the memory of the dead

Lina Alonso, born in Tunjuelito en 1994is a professional in Literature. When he is not writing, he plays the guitar. He has made significant contributions to the cultural and journalistic fields. He was part of the Noisey team at Vice, The Evil ThinkerThe Pulla of The Spectatorand currently works in Idartes. Her texts have been published in important media such as Arcadia, Universo Centro, Razón Pública, Criterio, Vallejo & Co (Peru) and La Otra (Mexico). In addition, one of her stories is included in the anthology ‘Contar la vida como contar los pasos’ (Syllable, 2021). He recently published his first book of poetry, ‘Las Devastaciones’, published by Matera Libros.

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To read this collection of poems is to honor the word with each memory that the scars leave behind. To delve into the pain and devastation, as the title suggests, through poetry that seeks comfort and meaning.

The work soothes the cruelty of life with verses that become a shelter. Alonso dedicates the poem ‘The Forgotten Ones’ “To those trans women who once dreamed of being loved, but who, ironically, found in that same love the path to death.”

With an intimate and heartbreaking voice, the author explores suffering and loss, creating a space for reflection on human fragility and resistance. Each poem becomes a testimony of the struggle to find beauty and meaning in the midst of death.

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Cover of the poetry collection ‘The Devastations’

Photo:Private file

“They are exquisite storytellers,

They have married Brad Pitt and Maluma in secret,

They live in Fort Lauderdale, but prefer to wake up in

The plastic chairs of any motel. (..)

They are birds with good holes,

When one goes to heaven — or when a man, always a man,

“kills them—”.

Gestures take on a deeper meaning as we face the news of the disappearance of a friend or acquaintance. This loss operates as a tangible reminder that death inevitably comes to everyone. The reality of that absence moves and disturbs, unleashing a constant uneasiness that haunts and destabilizes us.

Los 41 poems Alonso’s words disturb and upset those who read them, because they immediately recall that bullet that echoed in the neighborhood, but which was never talked aboutalways dominated by fear. In these poems there is an intention to describe the streets of Bogotá, to unearth the promises made the night before while toasting with liquor, and to shake up the songs that lead us to tell our own story. Alonso’s poetry, perhaps, consists of renouncing certainties and taking pride in the unspoken words, in the noise, in the absolute chaos, in the naked nights recorded in caresses, in the kisses full of oblivion and in the defect that leads us along the path of authenticity.

The ash

She is the actress of fire.

And who made the fire?

He made the shadows,

copulated between night and suspicion.

Old battle:

that of the sun, universal wound:

that of fire, residue of origin.

In addition to writing poetry, Lina Alonso has dedicated herself to research and editorial coordination.

Photo:Personal archive

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What was the process and story behind the publication of your first book of poetry, “Las devastaciones”?

A few years ago Manuel Kalmanovitzeditor of Matera Magazine, wrote to me to collaborate on the issue he was preparing. He told me at the time via Facebook or email, I don’t remember anymore, and a text of mine about hands in a pandemic came out. I have an obsession with hands and when he proposed the topic, boom! I had it, I sent him the text, he liked it, then he wrote to me to collaborate on another edition of Matera, one about colors. That article was also interesting.

That magazine is a rarity, and the whole project has a very good visual and editorial criterion, it is like those neighborhood miscellanies where one finds La Odisea in a second-hand Panamericana publishing house, and at the same time they sell beer sausage, one can invite love to an ice cream while there is a radio on playing the songs of the Sonora MatanzasI like that hybrid character between plastic arts and literature, that varied character is rare to find in the publishing world.

Oh well, and for the book Manuel told me “Pass me the poetry book you have”One day I ran into him on the street. I don’t think I’d ever seen him in person very often – to this day – we were leaving a chicken shop with Natalia Ospina, a friend, and it struck me as strange that he knew I was working on that book. He told me he was a witch and that’s how he knew. I sent it to him, it had a lot of changes. He did the illustration of that dog looking at who knows what, which I love, and it came out for this year’s Book Fair. The Opaco Zumbido collection, which is the poetry line of Matera Libros, has a design that I also like and well, the book turned out nice.

Your poems have a deep and meaningful intention to honor the dead left by the war in Colombia. Let’s talk a little about this…

I think that a lot of writing in the country, from poetry to essays to novels, is influenced by the war in Colombia. It is inevitable that the arts do not consider everything that happens to the bodies and the land of the country from its different registers.

Street graffiti sometimes have a face for those who look at them carefully, they come to life, they cross the threshold of the merely scenic

I remember very well that powerful book by TS Elliot ‘Function of poetry and function of criticism’‘In that part that says “The poetry of rebellion and the poetry of flight are not the same genre,” and I think it applies to the literature here, there are some things that one reads and feels that X or Y writer could have been born anywhere and can be translated into any language because he doesn’t mess anything up, he leaves everything in its place, he is very correct in writing and is condescending in his stories to the general public.I feel that the rebellious Latin American writer writes about what weighs on his Latin American being even when he does not refer to wars or massacres. The poems in this book have something of that, I don’t know if it is precisely to honor the dead.

The poem ‘Bogotá 6 am’ captures an everyday moment with a sense of wonder. How important is urban everyday life to you in your poetry?

Because it’s what interests me, or one of the things that I’m interested in seeing, witnessing and celebrating. Since I read Williams Carlos Williams, Luis Tejadaa Blanca Varela Or Fabián Casas, I realized that that was what I wanted to dedicate myself to: to focus on and write about something that was apparently mundane.

Things and everyday life have a terrible determination and a mortal character when they are taken care of, the city, the faces of the night or the graffiti of the streets sometimes have a face for those who keep a careful eye on them, they come to life, they cross the threshold of the merely scenic or jump with a new personality in writing. Like that story of ‘The cart’ by César Aira where the supermarket cart, after a tremendous narration, kills off the end with an “I am evil” or Patterson by Jarmusch, well, I don’t know, things that apparently have no importance fascinate me, I feel like there are a lot of membranes that open up when one writes them.

Photo:Instagram @linaalonsoc

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How do literature and poetry come into your life?

For the music. For the canteen in factThis is how poetry comes into my life.

When I saw the Sundays enchanted and almost suspended in the voice of Agustin Lara or Jeanette, When a song was playing in the block, José Alfredo Jiménez or the Golden Binomial and I saw women on terraces singing at the top of their lungs, men fixing their things in that neighborhood atmosphere that tends to swallow everything up in a particular hubbub, there I felt that reality was out of kilter, that the order of the world was different, and it wasn’t a particularly happy thing, it was like a working class that had in popular music a hymn to its pain, and above all words, in a place where talking about emotions or imagination among families is not so common.

Finally, the cantina music did it, and In that confusion, poetry came to me, that gap in language. Literature came to me through the books that were in the house, through the tasks that my older brothers had to do. Then I went to the Tunal Public Library; there I discovered Andrés Caicedo, HP Lovecraft, Mary Shelley, and Cortázar. I read like a madwoman because the more time I spent outside the house, the better. There was time to read and then go out to wander the streets, to see that books and wandering were a network that wanted to devour me, a scene that I wanted to be part of. Starting to read and play guitar made me write what I write.

What is the meaning of writing in Lina Alonso’s life?

I don’t know yet. Writing as a meaning is fractured for me in many ways, it is a land that I continue to explore among contradictions, readings and events that I can only sort out when I sit down in front of the computer or the paper.

Sometimes, if we talk about meaning, that is, interpretation, writing can be the way I resolve the messes in my head.whether it is understood or not is another thing, other times it allows me to rest with debts I have from the past or with my present, of matters that I can understand better when I put them into words, writing has that thing of shedding light, it is not always like that, on phenomena that one sometimes cannot explain in speech, and although language is porous and elusive in some circumstances, Writing focuses attention, allows bridges to be created and detonated between what happens and what can be said about it.

What time does Lina Alonso write? Does she write with or without music?

I don’t have a specific time because I have to work on other things. And those other things sometimes require me to be in an office. However, I try to take care of the untimely nature of ideas, conversations or sensations. I take out my cell phone and open the notes application where that phrase or impulse comes to mind. When I’m resting, I continue working or I simply publish like that and that’s it.

When I write, I don’t care if they’re playing. Los Suziox o Juan Gabriel, I do, sometimes when I reread something I wrote with certain sounds they have the rhythm of what I was listening to, it is not so good for the editors because I start writing and I forget that commas, periods, or punctuation marks exist and they are necessary, but, for me, the cadence of a writing is more necessary.

In fact I think that rhythm in writing is fundamental, there are very interesting things, but they lack music, they lack sound, and that type of writing seems depressing to me, it dries my head and I go somewhere else, one reads, for example, Carson Mc Cullers and a blues slides like a cat on the roof of his stories, or one reads Juan Rulfo and its characters are drawn like the antiheroes of Antonio Aguilar’s corridos. In poetry I feel that rhythm is something else, but it is there, for example in Marina Tsvetaeva’s scripts, anyway.

There is a rebelliousness that has always characterized you, and in your writings you always leave that essence of not being afraid to say what you think. Has this brought consequences for you?

There are always consequences, and I think this is wonderful. I don’t know if I’m a rebel, I don’t think so. Now, if we talk about consequences in writing, fear sometimes plays an unsuspected role.Fear of what? That the story will fall apart? That the image will break? That what one started will not be closed? That one will be excluded from something for writing? To put the proper name? Being born without the prudence of fear seems to me to give great writings, that is what you feel Pedro Lemebelto Camila Sosa, to Fayad Jamís, or to Miyó Vestrini. Everything can go very wrong, very well, but better when you feel the impulse and the decision to write without fear.