Resisting in Poetry

“The real poet is always a resistance force. The false poet, however, regardless of the causes he argues to advocate, is always conniving”, the Portuguese writer Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen stated this in an interview in 1963. One year previous to the military coup d’état suffered by Brazil which brought us twenty years of dictatorship and an authoritarian and antidemocratic inheritance that keeps so many of us still hostage as if we were still living a Stockholm syndrome of sorts.

Today, 2018, her words comfort me in my poet’s fate, in my truth and in the fact that I stand surrounded by other very real and resistant poets. We resist together, seeking light in these dark times, in the search of a country where love would be the empire and diversity would triumph. It is in diversity that beauty resides, it is in beauty that poetry inhabits. The beauty found in our day to day struggles, the beauty found in the truth and battles we face, the beauty found in the sweat of our labor and in the respectful and loving gazes.

Andresen also warns us, back in 1963, that “poetry is a form of resistance against all indignities and lies.” And it is in poetry that we, myself and the ones in my tribe, look for strength to keep going. It is in poetry that we look for hope, here and throughout the world. It is in poetry that we will cross over and, just like our musical poet Gonzaguinha, we will do so, trusting, fighting hand in hand with a young crowd who does not give up their battles. We will, in poetry, just like other delicate strong men and women, such as our Mario Quintana, see that: “those who will our path deny, they will falter, while we will fly.”

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