Juan Gabriel Vásquez presents his first book of poems: "Welcome to the poetariado"

The writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez chats with the poet, Ramón Cote Baraibar, and Federico Díaz-Granados, from the Visor.El País publishing house

“What I am doing is strange,” said Juan Gabriel Vásquez, looking up from the book and looking at the people attending the presentation.

"I read a poem in public and submit it to your judgment."

The 49-year-old Colombian novelist presented this Thursday as the one who reveals a mystery his first collection of poems,

, published in Visor, the publisher of black-cover books that collects the best poetry in Spanish.

In Vásquez's work there were signs of his taste for poetry.

In

the protagonist feels a predilection for the great Colombian poet José Asunción Silva.

The same as the author who gave life to him, who often visited the house in downtown Bogotá in his time as a law student where the poet lived the last five years of his life.

“I have read a lot of poetry.

To Borges, to Shakespeare.

And I got to write some poems in my youth that I could have published if I were suicidal”, explained Váquez.

He did not, but now the time has come, after having achieved international success with his novels.

He began by writing love poems dedicated to his wife, Mariana Montoya, trying to explore with language that indecipherable matter that is couple relationships.

"The project is jointly intimate and through various accidents I expand it, but the heart of the book is that: poems that explore the relationship of a couple," he added.

One night, at a party, he nervously showed them to the Andalusian poet Luis García Montero, who immediately gave him his approval.

In the prologue, García Montero points out that this is not a book of poems written by a novelist, but a book written by a poet.

The writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez talks with the poet, Ramón Cote Baraibar, and Federico Díaz-Granados, from Visor publishing house, this Thursday, December 15, at the Founders' Library, in Medellín (Colombia).

The talk revolved around Vásquez's new book, 'Cuaderno de Septiembre', a collection of poetry. El País

"Welcome to the poetariado", greeted the poet Ramón Cote Baraibar, one of the two invited to present the book.

The other was Federico Díaz-Granados, from the same union.

In the audience was the renowned Piedad Bonnett.

Cote recalled that when Vásquez told him that he was writing poems, he could not refrain from telling him that he hoped the novelist's hand would not be visible behind it.

Knowing that Cote was preparing a novel, Vásquez replied that he hoped that he was not writing a poet's novel.

"In that fencing the conversation began, but later I read them and they are very beautiful, extraordinary," said Cote.

The Colombian writer has done the reverse path to the common one.

Faulkner, he quoted half jokingly, said that every writer wants to be a poet.

When he sees that he doesn't get it, he goes over to the tale, which he finds just as difficult.

That makes him end up writing a novel.

“The novelists that interest me are also poets, like James Joyce.

There is an impeccable ear there.

García Márquez had it, even though he did not write poetry.

He wrote with a charm, a hypnotic rhythm.

A page of his recognizable as poetry”, Vásquez grabbed the word again.

He has not thrown himself into free verse, but has submitted to the rigor of hendecasyllabic verses, the Alexandrines, the blank verses.

“That is the most wonderful vehicle for Shakespeare to tell us beautiful things about love or power.

In the attempt to master a metric one gives words the ability to discover what was not there.

That has led him to a lapidary truth about poetry: "A poem is a wrestling match with language."

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