Thursday at Zenda. Poetry Thursdays. Thursday, in this case, about Neighbors. Poems from the Palma Palmilla neighborhood, a collective volume, edited by Cristian Alcaraz and Ignacio Mateos, which has emerged from the Letraversal label and that gathers, within its pages, the voices of more than twenty neighbors from the Málaga district of Palma-Palmilla. Framed within the Acto Reflejo project, this book gives an account of the ways in which, inside a model of cultural exploitation marked by the circulation of large capitals and the gentrification of urban spaces, the human communities linked to territorial forms such as neighborhoods maintain their own view of the world, and a special way of telling it. This is a lyrical testimony of life and looking in Palma-Palmilla, but also an example of something that is often forgotten: that beyond institutionalized cultural circuits, literature proliferates in the communities of people who meet and care for each other.
Vecinas. Poemas desde la barriada de Palma Palmilla
forma parte del proyecto de creación comunitaria
Acto Reflejo
. A través de talleres y acciones en el territorio, el grupo (multicultural e intergeneracional) trabaja de forma conjunta en un proceso de creación artística y construcción colectiva. El proyecto no tiene como finalidad acercar la cultura a los barrios, sino que
pretende activar la que ya hay, reconocerla y proyectarla desde las voces que lo habitan
. Se realiza en colaboración con agentes clave del tejido vecinal, artistas e instituciones culturales, implicando activamente a la comunidad en todo el proceso.
Además, comparten el siguiente poema coral, escrito conjuntamente por todas las autoras del libro:
HERE WAS A NEIGHBORHOOD
There are opportunities for everyone,
but it depends on the place where you were born.
We are seeing it: our country is crumbling.
Everything seems a lie, and we cannot fail.
We are waiting in the noise of the world.
The months pass, salaries that do not arrive,
few opportunities.
We are tearing down a wall. Every day.
And all we want is love.
What comes from outside will not end us.
We share the wound; we are the same flesh.
Little by little
we will make that wall crack.
Even when we cannot go on
we know that wall has a crack.
And we think: can’t you look at us from another place?
The rage sinks what we are.
I want the wall to crack and to see me.
And to see us.
I can see that together it is possible.
Behold how little we have opened a gap
in the wall.
Behold my fingers, which are also fists.
I hear the neighborhood dancing its songs
and I can feel that things are changing.
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VV.AA. Title: Neighbors. Poems from the Palma-Palmilla neighborhood. Publisher: Letraversal. Sold through: Todos tus libros.