Regina José Galindo’s Telarañas

By Ediciones del Pensativo

This year, Ediciones del Pensativo published Telarañas, a book of poetry by Regina José Galindo, who is known internationally for her work as a visual artist specializing in performance art. However, she started out as a poet in 1996 when Fundación Coloquia published her first book, Personal e Intransmisible, in Guatemala.

Regina had scattered some of her poems among the labyrinths of Facebook, but she is intense and does nothing by halves, and in this overflowing intensity there were many works waiting to be born as a book, comments writer and doctor Patricia Cortéz, who was in charge of selecting texts for this book of poems. And later she adds: Regina gives flight to her children, she unites them, but she does not comb or tidy up or apply makeup to them: there they are, the way they came into the world, bloody, screaming at the top of their lungs, demonstrating that poetry is intention, and beauty, and also pain and death. Everything that is part of life.

Now she returns to her origins with this collection of poetry written during the last fifteen years. In the book’s prologue, Juan Carlos Lemus says: This book draws from her cognitive and also her poetic maturity. She has finally reached the intuition of the raw verb that seeks and finds its place. Inside, her caverns, outside as well, but around her are her words, which act like mirrors and can, in many cases and to our misfortune, show us ourselves.

In 1998, Regina José Galindo received the Unique Poetry Prize from the Myrna Mack Foundation. Her works are part of various anthologies and magazines, such as Trentacuentos (Spain, 2008), Textos (Netherlands, 2008), Mujer cuerpo y palabra (Spain, 2004), Mujer, desnudez y palabras (Guatemala, 2002), Voces de post-guerra (Guatemala, 2001), Mujeres que cuentan (Guatemala 2001), Tanta imagen tras la puerta (Guatemala, 1999), and Para conjurar el sueño (Guatemala, 1998). She has received numerous international prizes for her artistic work, including the Prince Claus Award in 2011, the Grand Prize Award in the 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana (2011), and the Golden Lion for the Best Young Artist in the 51st Venice Biennale (2005).

Here is a poem that she dedicates to her daughter:

For Isla

Stop shooting, sons of bitches

you fill my head with echoes

and fry my nerves.

I am at home

and I am afraid

i hug her

i hug myself

i look

i turn, looking

paranoia in my neck

throb hurriedly

jumpy eye.

They kill me with every scare.

And I

i want to live.

She is too beautiful

too much mine.

Stop shooting, pieces of shit

she dreams

while I sing to her

But my voice breaks

and I break

Stop shooting

-because she-

needs me in one piece.