CUBA:
Roberto Méndez, Patience in the Provinces

Dalia Acosta


HAVANA,  (IPS) - Twenty books published is a record for a Cuban author -- the island's publishing industry can't keep up with national literary output -- but it is even more astonishing for a poet from the provinces like Roberto Méndez, who has achieved this and much more.

Méndez -- poet, novelist, and essayist -- has won Mexico's first international José María Heredia essay prize, named for the man considered Cuba's first great poet, who lived from 1803 to 1939, and spent much of that time in Mexico, where he died.

”It is a tribute to that poet, the founder of our literature, so little known and shamefully even less read,” Méndez, whose prize-winning essay is titled ”Eros and landscape in the poetry of José María Heredia”, told IPS.

Méndez has conducted a review of the poetry by Heredia, author of ”Niágara”, perhaps the most important piece of Cuban poetry, in search of something that others have not seen: ”A personal utopia, that of founding an entire literature when the country had not yet been founded, and putting into it everything that he believed was missing, from Latin roots to homage to indigenous civilisations.”

Méndez, born Sep. 7, 1958, in the eastern province of Camagüey, went to university in Havana, but unlike many other Cuban intellectuals and artists, he did not stay in the capital. He returned to his hometown.

There is a tendency in Cuba to think that in order to ”be somebody” one has to be close to Havana's intellectual circles, not stuck out in the provinces.

Méndez stresses that, as his personal experience shows, ”it is possible to be a writer in the provinces and publish here and there, win awards, be invited to participate in juries and events, and even travel beyond El Morro,” as the lighthouse at the entry to the Bay of Havana is known.

”But what is needed is triple the effort. One has to have a great deal of faith in what one does, know how to handle solitude and not get beaten down by the darker side of provincial life,” he said.

”There is no better way to prove that one is a writer than to be one in the provinces. If at age 50 you haven't gone mad or become bitter, then you can say you've arrived -- I still have a few years to go,” he said.

This year, Méndez presented three books during the Havana International Book Fair, in February, and was a member of the poetry jury for the Casa Prize, an award granted by the prestigious Cuban cultural institution, Casa de las Américas.

Heredia is just one of Méndez's obsessions. He has also studied many of the leading proponents of Cuban narrative.

In secondary school, ”I was already convinced I was a poet, with all its joys and sorrows. The rest has been the result of a series of experiences: the friends who followed a path like mine through university, the awards, the publications, and the rejections,” said the writer.

He won the ”Nicolás Guillén” National Poetry Prize in 2001 and the Annual Critics Award in 2002 for his book of poems ”Viendo acabado tanto reino fuerte”. His other works include the poetry collections ”Carta de relación” (1988), ”Desayuno sobre la hierba con máscaras” (1991), the novel ”Variaciones de Jeremías Sullivan” (1999) and the essays ”El fuego en el festín de la sabiduría” (1992) and ”Elogio de la noche” (2002).

Méndez is also a diligent contributor to Cuban magazines and other publications dedicated to art and culture.

”In my work as a writer there is an important percentage of determination and effort. As more years pass, I dedicate more time to writing. Perhaps poetry is the most elusive genre, she comes when she wants. But afterwards one has to engage in the hard work of edification,” he said.

The author says he does not believe in improvisation, and said that in his poetry there is a great deal of technique, ranging from the incorporation of certain musical forms, to intertextual dialogue with the plastic arts. As such, in his essays, story-telling and poetic language play a central role.

''De qué se hace sino de memoria, ¡ay! la poesía?” -- ”What is it made from if not memory, ay! poetry?” he wrote in ”Cuaderno de Aliosha”, published in 2000.