Margarita Cardona
(Colombia, 1949)   
 
 
 
Margarita Cardona

Margarita Cardona Villa was born in Medellín, Colombia, in August 1949. Her work has been published in cultural magazines in Colombia and abroad; her poems have appeared in a book which, in accordance with the advice of J. R. Jiménez, was “published with scissors”. Cita del Mediodía (Midday Rendezvous) (published by Endymion, 2005) collects the poetic work of 30 years’ constant labour, which received little recognition from Colombia’s cultural authorities. In 1982 the poet published a chapbook with the library of the University of Antioquia, collecting the first part of the aforementioned book. An important short poetry sample was published in 1982 by the same university. She is currently studying Hellenic grammar and translating classical Greek poetry.

Despite not being a gendered poetry, her poetry points towards a deeply feminine sensitivity, where pain, extremity, loneliness, intimacy, and the celebration of love meet an essentially nebulous  historical life and current reality. Her verse is cleanly structured, without any rhetorical twisting to prevent us from facing the self-sufficient reality of words. The elements of the world, the inherent paradox of love, faith in the beauty of poetry, the acid humor of the human tragedy, the inescapable reality of death, the agonic and ritual celebration of the ‘you’, are some of the characteristics of this poetry which, through imagery drawn from nature, enables us to glimpse a world that energes from the mists. Her words spring from the moment and remind us, constantly, of the finite quality of any human achievement. The celebration of the act of love gives this poetry a glimpse of the eternity of encounters, enabling us to see that the call of love is the pantheism where a divine brightness arises in the flesh, sharing the hours’ infinity. This poetry demonstrates that we live in history, and that the place of those meetings (which for the poet are the truest mystery) is built by something stealthier and deeper than reason. A transparent poetry that reminds us of those glimpses and of the difficulty of possession, the tireless metaphor of change, and the whispering music of eternity. It is a poetry that breaks the clock’s hands to rebuild time – and, with it, the sweet habit of living, the small wine stain from the feast, the beacon in the middle of the night, the sun’s ferocious glare, the power of words, the presence of death, and the grimace of pain left by every little vision that visits us.

© Carlos Eduardo Peláez Pérez (Translated by Laura Chalar)

Poetry:

Cita del mediodía, Endymion, Medellín, 2005

 



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