We need to talk about it: Fear. A writing workshop with Writer-in-Residence Manuel Iris

 In this session, participants will write about the concept of fear, whether it's about having or overcoming fear, or exploring the consequences of fear and talking about its opposites: bravery and love. Click on the image to register in advance.

El mes nacional de la poesía y sus peligros (Writer-In-Residence Blog)

Como cada año, el mes nacional de la poesía llega para todos aquellos a quienes, en Estados Unidos, gustan de escribir y leer poemas. Las bibliotecas y centros culturales se llenan de libros y menciones de poetas, cuando no de los poetas mismos llevando a cabo lecturas, conversaciones, conferencias, o firmas de libros. Las redes sociales se llenan de bienintencionados retos de escritura (un poema diario, por ejemplo) y de citas de poemas muy conocidos o muy oscuros. Quien se dedica a la poesía en este país está, por supuesto, muy ocupado en el mes de abril.

Todo esto son celebraciones públicas y necesarias de un arte que, como cualquier otro ejercicio espiritual, se realiza fundamentalmente en la privacidad. Quiero decir con esto que, aunque uno escriba o piense en poemas en la compañía de otros en una universidad, un taller literario, o un retiro de escritura, la experiencia poética es esencialmente individual, íntima. Por ello quiero hablar, aunque brevemente, de algunas cosas que creo que los poetas, lectores, e instituciones culturales de todo tipo deben tomar en cuenta durante el mes de abril.

Una muy buena manera de apoyar a poesía es pagarle a los poetas por las cosas que hacen, incluso si las cantidades son simbólicas. Tristemente, muchas instituciones culturales piensan que cuando un poeta se presenta gratuitamente en su recinto, han sido ellas quienes han hecho el favor de recibir al artista, de mostrar su trabajo, de darle un espacio; cuando en realidad son ellas quienes reciben el favor del tiempo del poeta.

Para seguir leyendo, haga click aqui

Manuel Iris at the Ohioana Book Festival 2023 in Columbus, Ohio

 If you are in Columbus, Ohio, today and tomorrow (April 21 and 22nd of 2023) please come to listen to some poetry and conversation with me.

Today at 7:00 pm

Poetry Reading - Manuel Iris at Streetlight Guild as part of the preparations for the Ohioana book fair.

Then, tomorrow at 4: 30 pm, I will be the final act at the Poetry Room of the 2023 Ohioana Book Festival. 

I am happy and honored by both invitations. Friends in Columbus, see you there!

My Life and the Libraries

 

 Of all man's instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination.

                                                                                              Jorge Luis Borges

In 2016 I finally visited the Klementinum Library in Prague. It was beautiful and mysterious, although much better illuminated than my imagination had predicted every time I read The Secret Miracle, by Borges. In this story, a man named Jaromir Hladík searches this library for God, who can be found, according to the librarian's words, in one of the letters on one of the pages of one of the four hundred thousand volumes in the room. In dreams (this library is visited in dreams even while awake) the protagonist achieves a divine revelation and a secret miracle. I need not say that, although my experience was infinitely poorer than Hladík's, the memory of the Klementinum Library, surrounded by the streets through which Kafka walked, is still alive in my memory.

However, despite its beauty, the Klementinum was not an actual library for me. The reason is straightforward: I couldn't read in it. The groups of tourists, the guides explaining in several languages and at the same time the historical details of the site, the huge number of people posing for photos, and the prohibition of touching the books and even walking through the corridors made silence impossible. Time did not stop, as always happens, inside the library, but allowed itself to be invaded by the rush outside. Sadly, for me the Klementinum was not a library but a complicated and impenetrable statue, a monument.

My Youth was the Story of Many Borrowed Books

I remember in a much less reverent but more endearing way a small bookcase in the living room of my friend Luis's house in Mérida, Yucatán, when I was entering adolescence. His was the first house with books that I remember, and the atmosphere in it was different from others. I can, to this day, recall several of the titles and covers that I had in my hands there, with my friend.

I still remember, with endless gratitude, the libraries —the studios— in the houses of my friends Mariana and Juan Paulo. The two of them were brilliant, and they were also cousins. Their families exercised the pleasure of reading, and their parents permitted me to read even when my friends were not at home and to borrow books. In both of these houses, my reading was occasionally accompanied by something to eat (a courtesy I was always grateful for) or with some conversation about those same books. The kindness and generosity of both families changed my life forever.

There was also the library of Father Gallo, a Jesuit priest who then asked me to organize the bookshelves of the parish in my neighborhood where, in addition to religious books, there were several others of poetry, essays, and literature in general. Those were the ones I read. About those readings, he told me that each book was a part, and only a part, of the possible understanding of life. He also told me, at another time, that I was a writer. He was one of the first people to say such a thing, when I was very unsure about it. Of course, I never tidied up the parish library, which was even messier after my visits.

In general, my youth was the story of many borrowed books and multiple friends who opened the doors of their libraries to me. I was a boy without many resources to whom several people, at different times, gave the opportunity and the necessary space to read one more book. Perhaps for this reason, I am sure that a library is a place where one is always welcome.

Public Libraries of My City

Naturally, I also spent many hours in the public libraries of my city. I especially remember two of them. The first is still called the Manuel Cepeda Peraza Public Library and is in the heart of downtown. Its spacious and illuminated silence became my home many afternoons. I became a regular user who sometimes did not arrive to read but to just be there, among books, in silence. I went there to think, to recharge myself with a type of energy that I could not find in other places. The same thing happened when I went to the central library of the Autonomous University of Yucatan, not far from the first one, which also had the luxury of air conditioning.

Little by little, I realized that libraries, and especially public libraries, are the most inclusive space that our societies have built: no one can remove anyone else from a library because they do not share the same ideology, nor is it necessary to believe —or not believe— in anything to gain access to a library. Surrounded by the words of other people who have worried about the same things or experienced similar circumstances at different times, whoever visits a library finds company. Depending on the occasion, a library can be a remedy for loneliness, or a space for solitude.

Every library in the world creates a community between the voices of all places, of all people, from all perspectives from before and now: the entire humanity is in dialogue with itself. Also, libraries are one of the very few places in contemporary society that do not expect money from those who visit it: they give, nurture, and provide, and they do it for free. We are all equal inside a library, and for this reason they are a sanctuary of our dignity.

The Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library

In the United States I have known public and private library systems with resources so extensive that can be (wonderfully) overwhelming, inexhaustible. The Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library is one example I am proud to mention and represent this year. Its digital and face-to-face resources, events, programming, services and ever-growing collection go far beyond the gathering and organization of books, audiobooks, films, documents, magazines, or databases... The 41 library locations are points of community building. The staff that make this system possible are dedicated, intelligent, admirable. They understand that their job is not to collect and store knowledge but to create bridges and defend humanity from its own dangers. I am, and we should all be, very grateful to them.

I am happy to live in a city with an exemplary library system, and to be able to do my part to invite more people to get to know others, and themselves, in their spaces and services. The young man I was can only reciprocate the generosity that so many showed me. In the end, all libraries are extensions of memory, sites designed to battle oblivion, places that we can enter to find or keep what we love. With that emotion we have to approach its doors, which will always be doors that open into ourselves.

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To read the original post at the Cincinnati Public Library website, click here

Hispanic Heritage Month poster. Cincinnati Public Library.

 I am coming back from a visit to the main branch of the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library. There I saw, on several walls, this poster with which they celebrate Hispanic people and Hispanic heritage around the world, in the US, and in Cincinnati. This poster is now in all 41 branches of the library, and will be there for Hispanic Heritage Month.

I am humbled, honored and thankful.

cheers, my friends.

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Vengo de visitar el edificio central del sistema de bibliotecas públicas de Cincinnati y ahí vi, en varias paredes, este póster con el que celebran la herencia hispana en el mundo, en los Estados Unidos, y en esta ciudad. Este mismo póster se encuentra ahora en las 41 sucursales de la biblioteca en Cincinnati.

Estoy honrado y agradecido.

Manuel Iris in "Inside the writer's head", Podcast by the Cincinnati Library

In this very special episode of Inside the Writer's Head, the Library's Writer-in-Residence speaks with Cincinnati's poet laureate Manuel Iris. Iris promotes poetry appreciation in our community, and encourages the reading and writing of poetry for all ages. The award-winning poet talks about his origins as a poet, and how music has influenced his lyrical poetry. He tells the story of how his grandfather introduced him to the dictionary, kindling lifetime love affair with words. "Every poem is a love poem, we write because we love something," Iris says. Iris reads an original poem from his latest book, "Translating Silence," in both Spanish and English. They also discuss the publishing process, and how different writing poetry is from publishing it. This episode with a local leader and artist is full of insight on writing and the power of words - don't miss out!