Alicia Es Martinez Juan

- Spain -

Born in Burgos in 1973, Alicia Es. Martínez Juan graduated in the sciences of information/journalism. She worked 14 years in various media placements in Valencia, then left the profession and devoted herself to poetry. With her partner Isaac Alonso, also a poet, she conducted El Dorado MAE, soon becoming the spearhead of the poetry movement in Valencia.

Then settling in Toledo, she reinvented herself on a new land with new persons. She founded the Cuéntame Toledo association (Walk me through Toledo), leading its poetic activities. It is also in Toledo that since 2013 she is the director of the Spanish edition of the International Poetry Festival VOIX VIVES, de Méditerranée en Méditerranée.

Her first poetry collection Corazones de manzana (ed. Cocó) published in 2011 was followed by three other ones together with two bilingual anthologies (French/Spanish) and a poetic-theatrical publication. Translated in French, Portuguese and Arabic, she is now dedicated to poetical activism.

Alicia Es. Martínez Juan (Burgos, 1973)

Journalist, artivist, poet and actress. She has published four collections of poems and two bilingual anthologies (from French into Spanish): Vueltas impares tejen del revés [Odd Turns Weave Upside Down] (with the audio album En tiempos sin nombres [In Times without Names] under the stage name Kólera, together with the musician Ferdy Jaque, also available on Spotify, 2019) in the book series Palabreadorxs at the publishing house El petit editor; En casa, caracol, tienes la tumba [In Your House, Snail, You Have Your Grave] (Gato Encerrado, 2016); No se le miran las bragas a la muerte (Cantos de Des) [Don't look at death's panties] (Celya), and Corazones de manzana [Apple Hearts] (Cocó, 2011); La coquille en spiral des escargots (Almanar, 2018), and Au temps sans noms (Lastura, 2016). Her poems have appeared in multiple anthologies and magazines and have been translated into Arab, French and Portuguese. She's a member of REACC (Network of Spaces and Agents of Community Culture), CAE (Culture Action Europe), and the Asociación de Gestores Culturales de Castilla-La Mancha [Cultural Affairs Directors Association of Castilla-La Mancha].

She has participated in poetry festivals in France, Italy, Egypt, and Morocco besides Spain, where she is the director of the Festival Internacional de Poesía Voix Vives, de Mediterráneo en Mediterráneo, in Toledo. She founded the festival Vociferio (performance and poetry festival) in Valencia. She co-directs, together with Ángel Luis Luján Atienza, the summer course at the UCLM "Poetry and its Transformative Power", whose conferences were published as a dossier in the magazine Quimera.

She designs a workshop called "Poetry is in Yourself" for children and adults for the Provincial Government of Toledo. She has taken her Hard Metal Poetry show En tiempos sin nombres to several festivals. She takes part as an actress and pot in the IV Edition of Planeta Vulnerable with the work Greenwashing.

She has founded El Dorado AC, an association for critical thinking through poetic action, Matadero LAB of arts and education, and La Divergente Cooperativa Integral de Castilla-La Mancha.

More about the poet

Poetry

I / I

Today a poem has died at the crossroads.
I saw it waiting for the death the whole morning,
motionless, put against the building's corner
under the cathedral erased by time
or by the local cleaning services,
ignoring its destiny.
It breathed slower and slower,
with its neck turned
by a blow in the head
half its brain exposed:
a wound of urban exhibition.
Some merciful people
took a look or even a caress.
Practical people that certified death
with a distant kick.
Everyone followed their way in the face of inevitability.
Someone gave it shelter against the wall
to avoid those who deliver smiles running over it.
And thus he was left, rundown.
No one gave it the coup de grace.
Slowly
my poem
kept dying.

I write over the aesthetic grave of the poem
so I won't lose consciousness over my life,
maybe put it against a building's corner too
by a merciful passer-by.

So what does the poet do
facing the poem, deprived of its fate,
with the head, toned blue,
hidden under the wings?
The poet stops,
gets closer,
and takes out her gloves
like she is holding the bereft in her hands.
She looks at it, and then at her surroundings:
she thinks she's the only one who has seen it
and raises her face.
The eyes already
onyx.
She follows her way.
She stops again,
retraces her steps,
stays motionless at the next edge of the corner,
equidistant from the poem.
Is she also waiting for her end,
her head split?
Will both corpses stay there
until the pick-up service of the dead poems
takes them to the garbage dump or the feed mill?

No. The poet will write a pigeon.

And she will leave, as everyone
Translated by Mónica Caldeiro
Hoy ha muerto un poema en la encrucijada.
Lo vi esperar la muerte toda la mañana,
inmóvil, arrimado a la esquina del edificio
bajo la catedral borrada por el tiempo
o por los servicios municipales de limpieza,
ignorante de su propio destino.
Respiraba cada vez más despacio,
con el cuello vuelto
por un golpe en la cabeza,
medio cerebro al aire:
herida de exhibición urbana.
Hubo gentes piadosas
que tendían una mirada, hasta una caricia.
Gentes prácticas que certificaban la muerte
con una patada lejana.
Todos seguían su camino ante lo inevitable.
Alguien lo cobijó algo más contra la pared
para evitar que le atropellaran los repartidores de sonrisas.
Y él quedó así, desmadejado.
Nadie le dio el tiro de gracia.
Siguió muriendo
lento
mi poema.

Escribo sobre la tumba estética del poema
para no perder la conciencia de mi vida,
arrimada a la pared, tal vez también,
por un transeúnte piadoso.

¿Qué hace, entonces, la poeta
frente al poema desprovisto ya de azar,
la cabeza, torneada de azul,
escondida bajo las alas?
La poeta se detiene,
se acerca,
se quita los guantes
como para coger entre sus manos al despojado.
Lo mira, mira a su alrededor:
cree ser la única que lo ha visto,
y levanta el rostro.
Ya los ojos
ónice.
Sigue su camino.
Se detiene de nuevo,
regresa sobre sus pasos,
se queda inmóvil al otro canto de la esquina,
equidistante del poema.
¿Espera ella también su final,
la cabeza hendida?
¿Quedarán allí ambos cadáveres
hasta que el servicio de recogida de poemas muertos
los lleve al basurero o a la fábrica de piensos?

No. La poeta escribirá una paloma.

Y se irá, como todos.
Xxxx / Xxxx

It is night.
Any night.
I hug you from behind
covering your whole body
taking you back to the womb
You burn.
You are cold.
I hold your hand
and whisper in your ear
spells so they won't flee you:
          Someday I will tell you
  one, two, three magics
  four polka dots
  five fears
  and a good little wolf
We shiver at the shore
of a spiral
that is a path
to nowhere
Your fever jumps to my flesh
I burn with you
It is night and it's cold
We are somewhere
between our housedeath
and our houseuncertain
We are going round and round
A tide of mothers
holding their children
from behind
is coming with us
We sleep cramped
in a train of legs and arms
and together we sing
a whisper of fallen leaves:
  Someday I will tell you
  one, two, three magics
  four polka dots
  five fears
  and a good little wolf
I don't know my neighbors
They don't know me either
Children do
Children still know about names
This is why we know many
are missing
At dawn they are
counted:
Tonight, the monsters
took Mazen
my son whispers.
I hold him tight
I can't tell him
as I did long ago
that monsters don't exist
I can't look under the bed
or in the closet
and as I smile tell him
that I killed them
He knows that monsters
are not only about tales
That any night
they run him away too
This is why I hug him tight
and I rock him:
  Someday I will tell you
  one, two, three magics
  four polka dots
  five fears
  and a good little wolf
Being cold is the slightest
of our problems
Here in the woods
behind the fence
being hungry is the slightest
of our problems.
Our children’s
fear of monsters.
That is a problem.
I open the eyes
The sun comes through the red curtains
We are home
The fever is gone
My child is with me
It's just been a nightmare
Stupid me
Monsters do not exist, mom,
and he sings slowly
as he caresses my cheek
with his little hand of moon:
  Someday I will tell you
  one, two, three magics
  four polka dots
  five fears
  and a good little wolf
Translated by Mónica Caldeiro
Es de noche.
Cualquier noche.
Te abrazo por detrás
abarcando todo tu cuerpo
regresándote al útero
Ardes.
Tienes frío.
Cojo tu mano
y te susurro al oído
conjuros para que no te huyan:
Algún día te contaré
una, dos, tres magias
cuatro lunares
cinco miedos
y un lobito bueno
Temblamos en la orilla
de una espiral
que es un camino
hacia nada
Tu fiebre salta a mi carne
Ardo contigo
Es de noche y hace frío
Estamos en algún lugar
entre nuestra casamuerte
y nuestra casaincierta
Seguimos dando vueltas
Una marea de madres
abrazadas a sus niños
por la espalda
nos acompaña
Dormimos apretadas
en un tren de piernas y brazos
y juntas cantamos
un susurro de hojas secas:
Algún día te contaré
una, dos, tres magias
cuatro lunares
cinco miedos
y un lobito bueno
No conozco a mis vecinas
Ellas tampoco me conocen
Los niños sí
Los niños todavía saben de nombres
Por eso sabemos que faltan
muchos
Al amanecer son ellos
los que se cuentan:
Los monstruos se llevaron
anoche a Mazen
susurra mi hijo.
Le aprieto fuerte
No puedo decirle
como antes
que los monstruos no existen
Mirar debajo de la cama
o en el armario
y sonriendo decirle
que acabé con ellos
Sabe que los monstruos
no son cosas de cuentos
Que cualquier noche
le huyen a él también
Por eso le abrazo fuerte
y le acuno:
Algún día te contaré
una, dos, tres magias
cuatro lunares
cinco miedos
y un lobito bueno
El frío es el menor
de nuestros problemas
Aquí en el bosque
detrás de la valla
el hambre es el menor
de nuestros problemas.
El miedo
de nuestros hijos a los monstruos.
Ese sí es un problema.
Abro los ojos
El sol se filtra por las cortinas rojas
Estamos en casa
La fiebre ya ha pasado
Mi hijo sigue conmigo
Ha sido todo una pesadilla
Qué tonta
Los monstruos no existen, mamá,
y canta despacito
acariciándome la mejilla
con su manita de luna:
Algún día te contaré
una, dos, tres magias
cuatro lunares
cinco miedos
y un lobito bueno
XXX / XXX

The times without names are here
under the doormats
They turned off the bells from the skyscrapers
and the telephones in the pockets
stopped ringing

It is the era without names
Nor obituaries in the squares
no more sepulchral inscriptions
asking for a mass:
those without a name don't need heaven
The door of the purgatory
was closed for them

In the times without names
no one gets up early
not even the kids
or the ducks
Without those names that kept us closer
that made us recognize each other as
brothers
now there are only breakfasts in the alleys
The routes were forgotten to be made
and the paths were mortared
In the era without names
we stopped existing

Everything lost:
the name
only the fight
is left
Translated by Mónica Caldeiro
Llegaron los tiempos sin nombres
debajo de los felpudos
Apagaron los timbres de los rascacielos
y dejaron de sonar
teléfonos en los bolsillos

Es la era sin nombres
Ni esquelas en las plazas
no más cruces tumularias
pidiendo misas:
los sin nombres ya no necesitan el cielo
Se cerró para ellos
la puerta del purgatorio

En los tiempos sin nombres
nadie se despierta temprano
ni siquiera los chiquillos
ni los patos
Sin los nombres que nos acercaban
que un día nos reconocieron
hermanos
ya solo hay desayunos en un callejón
Se olvidaron los trayectos de hacerse
y se tapiaron los caminos
En la era sin nombres
dejamos de existir

Perdido todo:
el nombre
sólo nos queda
la lucha
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE / DECLARACIÓN DE INTENCIONES

To show the bees the way to the flowers
To the flowers, the Cabbala of the clouds
To show the clouds being letters, ships, islands
To discover islands and extend dreams over the ocean
To weave silver routes
To create archipelagoes of stars
To travel to the starts
And draw the outline with charcoal
For its light to stand out
To be light, a procession of torches, an oil lamp
In old cities without streetlights
To build small very small cities
And lend salt to my neighbors
To have hugging neighbors in every little girl,
in every elderly or sick person
To be sick with a chronic condition
And infect others with a rash of smiles
To have my eyes shining and my ears clapping
To embellish the ears with ritual earrings
Made with feathers from the paradise bird
To be a feather in a pillow fight
A pillow for your thoughts
Thoughts made of colors in the balconies
To paint the balconies in blue
And in blue the wheat fields
To be a wheat field, a lonely ear in a path
To walk the paths always in your company
A company of mule drivers,
An anonymous company of ants
To tingle stomachs with ants in a blink
To blink with a trailer windshield wiper
To clean the rooms
To make elephants stop
To wave a breeze
To take a picture of an elephant from the sky and then discover it is stones
To throw stones at the imaginary waters
To make the water fall
To make the soil fall
Soil for your bare feet
To bare myself from miseries and forbid them
To forbid the swords, the heights, the anger, the glasses
To glue the broken glasses from all the mirrors
To invent a language of reflections from mirror to mirror on the rooftops
Rooftops with pirate flags
To survive, to live more than enough, with excess
To exceed myself with the reds of the sunsets
To grow dark with the sun and not be afraid
To close the fear deep inside myself
To go deep inside the underground where the moon sleeps
And to wake her up with a whisper
To whisper to the birds and the trees
To live in a tree and grow with it looking for the sun
To be the sun, a cathedral, a tapestry of creation,
A bobbin lace woven by experienced hands
To hold the bereft in the hands,
To deprive myself of gloves and socks
To hang my socks on the door of every house
To give away sweets to the children
To pour sugar in a spoon
And make it burn in a volcano
So I can get the eternal candy
To be a poet, at last
Translated by Mónica Caldeiro
Mostrar a las abejas el camino de las flores
A las flores, la cábala de las nubes
Enseñar a las nubes a ser letras, barcos, islas
Descubrir islas y tender sueños sobre el océano
tejer rutas de plata
crear archipiélagos de estrellas
Viajar a las estrellas
Y dibujar a carboncillo su contorno
Para resaltar su luz
Ser luz, comitiva de antorchas, lámpara de aceite
En viejas ciudades sin farolas
Construir ciudades pequeñas muy pequeñas
Y prestar la sal a mis vecinas
Tener vecinas de abrazo en cada niña,
en cada anciano, en cada enfermo
Enfermar de un mal crónico
Y contagiar un sarpullido de sonrisas
Que me brillen los ojos y den palmas mis orejas
Adornar las orejas con pendientes rituales
Fabricados con plumas del ave del paraíso
Ser pluma en una guerra de almohadas
Almohada para tus pensamientos
Pensamientos de colores en los balcones
Pintar los balcones de azul
Y de azul los trigales
Ser trigal, espiga sola en la vereda
Recorrer las veredas siempre en tu compañía
Compañía de arrieros,
compañía anónima de hormigas
Hormiguear estómagos con un pestañeo
Pestañear con el limpiaparabrisas de un tráiler
Limpiar alcobas
Parar elefantes
Agitar brisas
Fotografiar elefantes desde el cielo y descubrir que son piedras
Tirar piedras al agua imaginaria
Caer agua
Caer tierra
Tierra para tus pies descalzos
Descalzarme de miserias y prohibirlas
Prohibir las espaldas, los altos, la cólera, los vidrios
Encolar los vidrios rotos de todos los espejos
Inventar un lenguaje de reflejos de espejo a espejo en las azoteas
Azoteas con banderas piratas
Piratas sobreviviendo libertades
Sobrevivir, vivir de sobra, con exceso
Excederme con el rojo en los atardeceres
Atardecer y no tener miedo
Meterme el miedo bien adentro
Adentrarme en los subterráneos donde duerme la luna
Y despertarla con un susurro
Susurrar a los pájaros y a los árboles
Vivir en un árbol y crecer con él buscando el sol
Ser sol, catedral, tapiz de creación,
Encaje de bolillos tejido por manos expertas
Recoger entre mis manos al despojado,
despojarme de guantes y calcetines
Colgar mis calcetines a la puerta de todas las casas
para repartir dulces a los niños
Verter azúcar en una cuchara
y quemarla en un volcán
Para conseguir el dulce eterno
Ser, al fin, poeta
untitled / sin título

Hush, hush, hush,
Sings the grandma
Rocking herself
Like a little girl
When the bomb

Up, up, up
Hiccups the girl
Alone again
Like when old
When the muzzle

Bam, bam, bam
Yells the young girl
as she runs alone
Like the little girl
Like the grandma
When the bomb
When the muzzle
Translated by Mónica Caldeiro
Ea, ea, ea
Canta la abuela
Se acuna sola
Como la niña
Cuando la bomba

Ia, ia, ia
Hipa la niña
Otra vez sola
Como de vieja
Cuando el bozal

Oe, oe, oe
Grita la joven
y corre sola
Como la niña
Como la abuela
Cuando la bomba
Cuando el bozal

Alicia Es Martinez Juan

- Spain -

Poetry

I / I

Xxxx / Xxxx

XXX / XXX

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE / DECLARACIÓN DE INTENCIONES

untitled / sin título