Dichter
Liana Mejía
Liana Mejía
(Colombia, 1960)
© International Poetry Festival of Medellin
Biografie
Born in Medellín, Colombia, in 1960, Liana Mejía won the University of Antioquia’s IV National Poetry Award in 1982, followed by the University of Nariño’s Awaska National Poetry award in 1984. In its early years, she was a member of the Prometeo magazine editorial commitee. Liana writes, she says, because she has to, and notes that a poem “shares your essence in a way, it seems, that enables others to see the passing of your life through it, and that is always dangerous; baring your soul makes you more vulnerable with each poem.”
Her poetry represents a departure from a tendency to praise the feminine. In her work, femininity is neither a subject nor an obsession. Neither are her love poems conventional or languid. Rather, her depiction of lovemaking is unique and sincere, a great expressive leap away from the proliferating clichés of so-called ‘feminine poetry’. Everyday life is also a source of poetic revelation to Liana Mejía; her poems show us a particular way of perceiving the world and of being in it. Through the expressive territory of her work she reveals reality to us and gives us back its mystery.
© Jairo Guzmán (Translated by Carolina Mejía)
BibliographyExtraña en mi memoria (Stranger in my Memory), Universidad de Antioquia Publishing House, National Poetry Award Collection, 1982
Los viajeros del sueño (Travelers of Dreams), Universidad de Nariño, Department of Human Studies, Awasca Writer’s Workshop, 1985.
Links
Liana Mejía’s page on the International Poetry Festival of Medellín website (in Spanish)
Gedichten
Gedichten van Liana Mejía
Sponsors
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère