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Stitches in the (incomplete) tissue of Marilyn Bobes
05November

Stitches in the (incomplete) tissue of Marilyn Bobes

In her words there are numerous threads in dialogue with time, with the beauty and potential counterparts, with the antipodes of dark and light to show the splinters of everyday survival. Her writing is not a script of comfort, because with the poet, narrator and editor Marilyn Bobes (Havana, 1955), it is difficult to know where the embroidery poem begins or ends without assuming the risks of naming the wildness, the broken, the lost. Beyond those painful scars, her verses foreshadow a «continuous start», «a tautological and essential confirmation of hope».


Not surprisingly, one of her first books, La aguja en el pajar (The needle in the haystack), published in 1980, approached from the exercise of creation, these complexities of existence. "It's not a needle to change the life -she says, but its line can make a map». And that was her will for more than three decades of poetic creation: to build a personal landscape that press springs of fear, loneliness, nostalgia or heartbreak. She assumes her womanhood from a subversive architrave especially in her initial poetry, almost never solemn, to watch closely the fate of the female subject and give her a voice that tries to show under the signs of nudity and freedom.


If we make a circumnavigation of the today Cuban literature, we find that Marilyn is an essential part not only of what many call «women's writing» but also of those more fruitful and inclusive waters that define today's multiple aesthetic of contemporary Cuban poetry.

Marilyn Bobes (Havana, 1955). Cuban poet, narrator, literary criticism and editor. She has degree in History. She has won several national and international literary awards for her work. Among her books are La aguja en el pajar (The needle in the haystack) (poetry, 1979), Hallar el modo (To find the way) (poetry, 1989), Alguien tiene que llorar  (Someone has to mourn) (story, 1996), Revi(c)itaciones y homenajes (Revi(c)itations and tributes) (poetry, 1998), Somebody has to mourn again (story, 1999), Printing and Reviews (2003), Mujer perjura (Woman perjures)(novel, 2009), Fiebre de invierno (Winter Fever) (novel, 2005). She compiled and edited, with Mirta Yanez, an anthology of female stories Estatuas de sal (Statues of salt) (1996).