Spotlight On Writers
Eduardo Escalante
@eescalantegomez
- Where, do you hail from?
I live in a special harbor Valparaíso, thru my window I fill my white Imagination. Every day I see the blue sky travels across the green, red, yellow houses. It is what visitors get, a life picture, full of sunbaked air.
the wind color palette a soul artist / houses shine in opera colors
the inhabitants are people /who think in color
they paint riddle spaces/
digging in defiance of the daily currents/
reaching and grasping and pulling/
someone knows the description
- What is the greatest thing about the place you call home?
My story begins in northern Chile, since then I have a great connection with the desert, with silence, with loneliness. They are always present in what I seek, what I read, what I write. My story continues from age 7 in Valparaiso. Early on, I was able to connect with Neruda’s poems. Later, we created with stained glass workshop with a great friend of Neruda. I visited many times the house called “Sebastiana”. From the hills, the sea allows me some deep connections to the changes, trips.
- What turns you on creatively?
Air, wind, faces, eyes, people walking, women, old people, joys, sorrows, different kinds of beauty, injustices. I watch them daily and read what the poets write about it. Observe, listen, feel very important when writing a poem. I try to express what I feel.
- What is your favorite word, and can you use it in a poetic sentence?
Universe
Epiphany
Hands
garden
A map to now
Having spent all my life near the sea, in a tightly circumscribed part of one beach, now I am standing here and looking at the horizon with the certainty of innumerable uncertainties. Thoughts are silent as shadows, obscurely clumsy when maneuvering in the night closed towards an idea about something. A valley can be green and extensive or can be a valley of trenches. A name reminds me of a city or a field of extermination in its
suburbs, and a clean phrase, the exodus of a people. Human life is complex and paradoxical.
- What is your pet peeve?
Any superficial thing, prejudiced people, judge life only from what they believe it should be (including some poetry magazine judges). The poets live the world from the opening, from the possibility of the different.
- What defines Eduardo Escalante?
Looking yourself in the mirror, is the most difficult thing, especially when you are old and have so many bills to pay. I feel I say with prudence what I feel; I try that people overcome themselves and believe in themselves. I write poems as a series of words that invite you to explore, to leave the world of routines, to recover the look, the feelings. Only the readers of my poems will be able to say if I succeed or if it is worth what I write. I will continue reading and writing because it gives me a new dawn every day.
- HAY UNA ORDEN - October 29, 2017
- El Futuro, Más Allá De La Distopía - October 8, 2017
- Tierra Desgarrada - September 26, 2017
