«I wouldn’t want you to think
that I don’t think of you
because I don’t write you.»
It’s only that now I must punch a hole
to your absence in my shelter.
and I don’t know if I’m ready to put it
next to a poem
that tells, somehow,
that doesn’t hurt much,
how you vanish while opening my eyes.
-Transido de palabras (Vexed by words) Elvira Sastre.
Thanks to all the possibilities Internet wove, it became easy to meet people you could never meet in another way. I remember chatting with many strangers through many chats, those that these days are apps, apps that let you find other users who are nearby. There I met a girl some years ago and now we text once in a while.
Laura send me a writing through Tumblr: Llovimos tanto que me ahogué (We cried so much I drowned)1 by Elvira Sastre, and to give me an emotional blow she gave me Baluarte (Bastion) (2014), Sastre’s second book, one that was well received in Mexico and some South American countries and that has been already translated into English.
Elvira Sastre Sanz was born in Segovia in 1992. in many interviews she has pointed two persons as her major influences in her love to poetry: Gustavo Bécquer as the one who initiated her in the art and Benjamín Prado, as the responsable of giving her courage to start to write, but she already has memories of being surrounded by books. Sastre wrote her first poem when she was 12, she won a prize at 15 and since that age she writes in her blog Relocos y recuerdos (Very crazy and remembrances [untraslatable pun: recuerdos mean both remembrances and very sane].
Apart from being a poet, she is an English Philologist by the Complutense University of Madrid, she has translated many books like Los hijos de Bob Dylan by Gordon E. McNeer, Poemas de amor [Love Poetry] by Oscar Wilde and novels like Todo es mentira [We Were Liars] by E. Lockhart and she translated to English the lyrics from the album La Deriva by the band Venusta Morla.
While is a fact that most of her poems are about love, Sastre also approaches social issues in Spain, but those are not that different to those in this side of the Atlantic [The Americas].2
From her first book 43 maneras de soltarse el pelo [43 ways of letting your hair loose] (2012) there is the poem Escribirlo no es conocerlo [Writing it is not knowing it]3 which easily says:
“No te quiero decir adiós.
Entiéndeme, me resisto a dejarte ir
porque siempre has sido todo lo que venía después,
y ahora que te vas
se me caen de las manos las mañanas contigo.”
I don’t want to say goodbye to you
Understand me, I resist to let you go
because you always were everything that was going to happen
and now that you left
all the morning with you slip through my hands.
Elvira Sastre writes about pain and pure love with such precision in her words that the reader can connect with her from the first line.
While working with Adriana Moragues Tú la Acuarela/ Yo la Lírica (2013) was born, and in 2018 Aquella Orilla nuestra, with illustrations by Emba, was born.
Sastre broke barriers thanks to the Internet, because she is regarded as one of the most read young poets. Apart from hearing her sharing her own poems through Instagram, we can read her in El País newspaper, not only in articles and interviews, but as a columnist.
She published in 2016 La soledad de un cuerpo acostumbrado a la herida and in 2018 Aquélla orilla nuestra printed by Alfaguara, in late 2018 she received the «La Sombra del Ciprés 2018» award.
In March the 5th* her first novel was published: Días sin ti, printed by Seix Barral. She anticipated that much of this book comes from her verses in Baluarte and that the Dora character is partly inspired by her grand-mother, Sote. By the way, Elvira has won the Biblioteca Breve award* for this novel.
While some of us were waiting for her novel to be published, I was still searching for her Ya nadie baila (2015).
1.Sastre, E. (October 04 2012). Llovimos tanto que me ahogué [We cried so much I drowned]. [Message in a blog] Retrieved from: http://bleuparapluie.blogspot.com/2012/10/llovimos-tanto-que-me-ahogue.html
2.YouTube. (March 20 2018). Elvira Sastre – Adriana Moragues – País de poetas [Country of Poets].
3.Sastre, E. (January 14 2012). Escribirlo no es conocerlo [Writing it is not knowing it]. [Message in a blog] Retrieved from: https://bleuparapluie.blogspot.com/search?q=escribirlo+no+es+conocerlo
Sources:
Geli, C. (February 4 2019). El fenómeno de la poesía Elvira Sastre gana el Biblioteca Breve de novela. Barcelona, Spain. El País. Retrieved from:
https://elpais.com/cultura/2019/02/04/actualidad/1549282726_303833.html
Sastre, E. Madrid me mata. El País. Barcelona, Spain.https://elpais.com/agr/madrid_me_mata/a
YouTube. (February 19 2018). La Resistencia. Interview with Elvira Sastre. [Video]. Retrieved from:
YouTube. (November 27 2018). #EnLaFrontera135. Interview with Elvira Sastre. [Video]. Retrieved from:
YouTube. (October 18 2018). El Faro. Entrevista a Elvira Sastre. [Video]. Retrieved from:
YouTube. (March 20 2018). Autoentrevistas. Elvira Sastre, poeta influencer. [Video]. Retrieved from:
Mujeres Artistas/ Female Artists 