LAUNCH CEREMONY OF THE BOOK OF POEMS “RETAZOS” BY AMPARO PERIS

The author of the collection of poems that I present today, Amparo Peris, is from Valencia and studied Law at the Complutense University of Madrid, a city where she has lived for almost 20 years.
She has worked as Coordinator of International Courses at the Valencian Library and at the Spanish Academy in Rome.
She has organized literary activities at cultural conferences such as «Ventanas» (windows) and «La Poesía está de moda» (Poetry is fashionable), at the Fine Arts Circle of Valencia and at the IVAM.
Her journalistic vocation has taken her, in «Las Mañanas de la Radio» (Radio Mornings), to «El Rincón de Amparo» (Amparo’s Corner) (Valencian Municipal Television), where she recommended books for all ages.
She was awarded «La Pluma Montblanc» from the Magazine of the newspaper «El Mundo» for an article about women.
She has oriented her creativity towards the epistolary genre, stories, thrillers, social and love genres, and poetry.
In Retazos, which is the book that has brought us here today, she shows us fragments of lives, stories and, above all, love poems, a love that goes beyond what we understand by such a word.
For Amparo, literature is a passion and, through language, she verbalizes life in moments, looks, fiction and reality.

WORK PUBLISHED SINCE 1995
POETRY
Sensaciones
Maquillaje de Noche
Las Gatas de Rodas aúllan a la luna
13 Notas de ébano y marfil
Retazos
STORIES
Espejismo
Cartas desde el andén
ANTOLOGIES
101 Crímenes de Valencia
Encuentro Nacional de Poetas en Anuesca
Tan Mortals, tan Divines (Diálogo entre la Poesía y las Artes Plásticas)
Caminos de la Palabra (homenaje a Max Aub)
El Sueño del Búho
Ventanas
Cuaderno de Viaje (Torrent de Paraules) 2011-2021
NOVELS
Café Piano
Toma pan y moja
Tengo que decirte algo
El Club de Anastasia
Ambición

I would like it to be Amparo who talks about his literary production. I think the best launch ceremony would be to do an interview that all of you who have come to join us could complete.

I start with some questions and reflections:
Your poetry, Amparo, seems fundamentally narrative to me. And I base it on a definition about it: «That which tells a story. Their length and complexity vary from one poem to another and they are not usually dramatic. The verses try to be objective and the metric scheme and rhyme are usually regular». In your case, I think the story of the emotions you express stands out… Do you agree?

It's a poetry that gives great importance to memory, often conveyed by melancholy. Why?

It also greatly values friendship…

Music and love, dance and love, tango and love… What were you looking for in that link? In the tango poem, furthermore, the rhythm is very set…

In your poetry, the poetic voice expresses itself through dialogue and continually demands a response.

Despite negative responses from the «you», despite failures, heartbreaks… the narrator of her emotions does not lose a single moment of excitement and hope for the future.

Geography also plays a role in your poetry since you link it to love and they are usually emblematic places.

Your reflection on fear as a brake on freedom.

Why Virginia Wolf, Marguerite Duras and Sylvia Plath?

Federico García Lorca is another of your references and your poem «Navegando por tu cuerpo» (Navigating through your body) seems very Lorca…

And, in philosophy, Plato…

Or erotic literature like Lady Chatterley’s Lover…

How has cinema influenced your poetry?

Your poem «Feroz» reminds me a lot of «No hi havia a València dos amants com nosaltres» (There weren’t two lovers like us in Valencia) by Vicent Andrés Estellés.

The incidence of sensual love in many of your poems.

Do you think that the biographical component is fundamental in the work of poets?

The sea is another constant in your poetry. What metaphor or symbol does it represent?

And then there is painting: Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings and Courbet’s «The Origin of the World». Why those paintings and those artists?

And, of course, the great narrator who was Guy de Maupassant…