Dichter
Gonzalo Márquez Cristo
Gonzalo Márquez Cristo
(Colombia, 1963)
© Jorge Mario Múnera
Biografie
A poet, fiction writer, essayist and publisher, Márquez Cristo has published four poetry collections, an anthology of his poetry, a novel and a book of short stories. In 1989 he participated in the founding of the well-known literary review, Común presencia. He is a director of the literary imprint Los conjurados and the weekly webzine Letra viva. His poems have been translated into several languages and included in 21 anthologies. He has received several awards, and his work has been reviewed by, among others, E.M. Cioran, Roberto Juarroz, Antonia Gamoneda, Roger Munier, Claude Michel Cluny and Antonio Ramos Rosa.
In the poetry of Márquez Cristo, darkness has flashing clefts; desire burns and wounds; the night vigil clarifies the ominous signs of our dreams; sailors lose the stars; and each step on the high road of life takes us, little by little, deeper into the fatal fog.
Full of admirable, enigmatic verses, the poems of Oscuro nacimiento (Dark Birth) subdue us. Eugenio Montejo, in his foreword to La palabra liberada, observes that “[in] open, loose verses, confessing that he despises the ‘vertical body’ of poems, [Márquez Cristo’s] voice contributes to the combat of the shadows, in a tone with a certain cryptic slant”. Like augurs, wizards or the sibyl, the poet according to Márquez Cristo gives ambiguous and dark answers, with both poetry and oracles identified as “a torrent of signs”.
‘The Incandescent Shadow’ is an especially remarkable poem which encapsulates his work, evoking the despair and catastrophic world of Georg Trakl’s poetry. One one level, the poem is about personal defeat and failure; on another it is also an emblematic, tragic portrait of the last fifty-five years of political life in Márquez Cristo’s native Colombia, which has lived under “the voracity of power and its avalanche of mire” and suffered “war with its black trees”.
Faultless publisher, feverish reader, Márquez Cristo had no childhood or adolescence in his writing. From his very first poems, the fruit in his arbour was ripe.
© Marco Antonio Campos (Translated by Nicolás Suescún)
Bibliography Poetry
Apocalipsis de la rosa (Apocalypse of the Rose), Quimera del oro, Bogotá, 1988
La palabra liberada (The word Liberated) Los Conjurados, Bogotá, 2001
Liberación del origen (Liberation of the Origin, an anthology), Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, 2003
Oscuro nacimiento (Dark Birth) Los Conjurados, Bogotá, 2005
Prose
Ritual de títeres (Puppet ritual, a novel), Tiempos Modernos Editores, Bogotá, 1992
El tempestario y otros relatos (The tempestario and other stories), Común Presencia Editores, Bogotá, 1998
Links
Gonzalo Márquez’s blog
Biography, poems and interviews in Spanish
Arte poética
Biography and poems in Spanish
Poéticas
Biography and poems in Spanish
Eldigoras.com
Biography and poems in Spanish
Confabulacion
Notes by Gonzalo Márquez in Spanish
Gedichten
Gedichten van Gonzalo Márquez Cristo
Sponsors
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère