Interviewing Eucanaã Ferraz

Interviewing Eucanaã Ferraz

Lisbon, 18th May 2019

On the poet’s birthday, we met in the coffee shop at the Museum of Modern Art. “18.05.1961” is the title of a poem by Eucanaã (from Livro Primeiro) who was born, so the poem goes, “in a pauper’s place,/ where the hospital stood far” (“num lugar pobre,/ onde o hospital era longe”), but from which happiness could be anticipated; this was in fact a topic broached in our conversation and which has been neglected by many poets and critics who tell us we would do better to suspect joy and happy things in life. Because Pessoa’s line holds true – “Mas o melhor do mundo são as crianças” (“But what’s best in the world are children”[1]) – we also talked about poetry for childhood and how writing for children is to write free from censure.

JF: Do you like poetry?

 I love it (laughs). I think it’s what I like the most, apart from music and... painting.

JF: What is poetry for? And what is your poetry for?

 Poetry is for us to have a bare minimum of dignity as people. I would say my poetry has the same ambition.

JF: In one of your poetry books for children (and also for adults), you write in your biography that you decided to write poems “to have in them all the things I like.” Do you manage to achieve that?

 I manage to have many things I like and also many things I don’t like, unfortunately.

JF: É por essa razão que se diz que a sua poesia é solar e alegre? Is that why it is often said that your poetry is joyful, beaming?

Joy interests me a lot. However, funnily enough, joy is not very appreciated as a state of mind. Happiness, for example, has a certain status…although it is always said that it doesn’t exist, it’s a series of fleeting moments, as if any other state of mind were permanent. But we only demand that of happiness. That doesn’t happen with joy, because joy in itself is more fragile and… momentary, as if it were a flame burning fast. It’s an impetus which has to do with enthusiasm about things, precisely because it’s an intensity detached from the duration of time. In this sense, it’s to take profound pleasure in living. And I do have that. So, to some extent, even when poems are, and many times they are indeed dysphoric, sad, and about hard-hitting, traumatic things, even then it’s as if there were this underlying desire for joy, and also a complaint that the world does not always tend to joy. There are artists who can be very joyful, and I find them captivating. I think about Miró, and how he is joyful; about Calder, how he is joyful; how Eugénio de Andrade can be joyful; how Sophia de Mello Breyner can be joyful. There is a light in their works which comes from joy.

JF: In the preface to Poesia, Carlos Mendes de Sousa says that “poets of light” are regarded with a certain suspicion. Can you tell where this suspicion comes from?

Indeed, I think that in general there’s always that suspicion. I would like my poetry to be even more joyful. But where there’s light, there’s shadow… even for there to be light, its counterpart needs to emerge. There’s an image from one of the poems, I don’t know whether it is from the first or the second book, at any rate, from the first books, which goes something like this: “o poema é ver/com lanternas/ que cor é a cor/do escuro” (“the poem is to see/ with lanterns/ which colour is the colour/ of the dark”). So, that’s it, the poem is a lantern: one needs a lantern when seeking for the dark, and then we don’t get to find the dark, because something has already been illuminated. Even in the most sombre, the most terrible and tragic works there is light because the reader or the viewer feel that something is enlightened when they face a work of art, regardless of how terrible it is; it’s as if the shadow itself has turned into language, has reassembled itself into a shape, and as if that provides an understanding of our tragic condition. And that is a light in itself.

JF: In the section “À mesa de trabalho” (“At the desk”), from Desassombro, you write a poem in several parts. How do you see the work of a poet: between the search for clarity and the manufacturing of lines?

I think poetry is inevitably work. One must create and suspect and do it again and try, make mistakes and get it right and then make mistakes again. It’s an arduous task. Now, what we’re dealing with is way beyond simple concoction. In the workshop, there’s a dimension of enlightenment, of enchantment, of fright, enthusiasm for the unknown. There’s a psychic, emotional machining involved when we work. There are those famous mathematic equations of perspiration and inspiration and there’s a lengthy discussion about that – 30% inspiration, 70% inspiration, well, we’re always looking for that.

JF: You’ve said before it was all 100%.

Yes, I always say it’s 100% inspiration, 100% perspiration. Ideally, when you’re working on a poem, at some point you lose track of what you’re doing rationally and of the extent to which your reason is moved by something beyond yourself; and what is beyond yourself is the poem itself, it’s not something supernatural. So-called inspiration comes from an unknown place. It holds the poem there, which strangely enough you yourself are writing. And then it looks for solutions, and you try to write the poem you don’t yet know. So it really is a workshop, but it is working with the unknown, with what you don’t know, with what is beyond yourself.

JF: The gaze is at the heart of your poetry. You even say, reminiscent of Caeiro, that you “think with your gaze”. I believe you say exactly that in the poem “Pintor” (“Painter”), from Cinemateca.

My sensitivity is very visual; I am moved by gaze. I got here and saw the colour of the chairs, with something on them, red, grey, white… I saw everything; my gaze is quick and all-encompassing. Retratos com erro (Portraits with mistakes) is a book which is very connected to photography and it does reference photographers and photography… I’m all about the eye, you know? I could have been, maybe, someone who works with visuality: a photographer, a painter, or someone who deals with visible matter.  In actuality, that didn’t happen and I ended up entering a world where, apparently, the fight is against abstraction, rather, against a matter not exactly visual, connected to thought. But there, that sensitivity surfaces. That’s why I like poets which are moved by gaze to some extent, when there’s no further distinction between seeing and thinking, one thing moves the other. Hence my taste for Sophia, for example, for certain things by Fernando Pessoa, and for João Cabral de Melo Neto. They are poets who, each in their own way, think with their gaze. Unrelated to poets, I always think of Matisse. Firstly, because he has that joy, joie de vivre, and I’ve got joie de vivre. And Matisse is a very special person to me because he was the first modern artists I became acquainted with. I’d never seen a modern artist before in my life and when I saw that I was mesmerised. There was pink, red, green, and it was joyful, it reverberated, colour reverberated in the light, a light which would spread its whole all over, a light coming from colour itself and from shapes, not from the outside; everything was illuminated. And from that moment on, Matisse became the artist of my life. It’s what I pursue, what I would like to be, in my writing. I can’t do it, but my ambition is to be able to write how Matisse paints.

JF: You’ve said in an interview that Brazilian poetry has never experienced the anxiety of influence and you’ve replaced Bloom’s expression with “the joy of influence”. Is there poetic comradery in Brazil?

Perhaps I’ve projected onto Brazil something which is mainly my own. At any rate, when I think about the Brazilian scene on a larger scale, I can clearly see the revival of poets from earlier generations, and from the generation itself; I recognise common interests, group formulations, as if there really were a community spirit which was never lesser than the desire, in itself fair, of surpassing and denial, of discordance.

I’ve always been moved by João Cabral paying homage to Manuel Bandeira, or by the fact that a poet like Vinicius de Moraes wouldn’t exist without Manuel Bandeira. Three very different poets. I therefore like to think that the relationship with tradition is not a problem, but rather a driving force, an engine which propels us, which teaches, which has a lesson to give. Learning is not something that needs to be fought against because the lesson can be one of continuity, that permanence doesn’t have to be a pastiche exactly, a kind of indolence, assimilation devoid of criticism. It can simply be a relationship free of conflict, you know? I think there’s always a drive to have conflict in the art world, as if conflict is the only think that can push you forward. I don’t think so. I think there’s an idealised view of conflict. Friendship, coincidence, these are things that can move, transform, without subservience or mere assimilation. Each of us ends up finding their own way without any need for a traumatic relationship with tradition or with the contemporary. But I know it doesn’t always work that way and that interactions vary a lot depending on the historical period, on the personality of creators, they even depend on contingent factors which can be external to the process of creation.

JF: And in Portugal how do you see the relationships between poets, are there any traumatic relationships?

Perhaps, but I’m not sure I know how to discuss it (laughs)... for example, my poetry… no, I don’t like to say “my poetry”, I think it’s pretentious, I don’t talk like that. What I write… concerning the Portuguese, for example, I’ve always talked about and I still talk about Eugénio de Andrade, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, poets of my life, whom I love. The first poet I read was Fernando Pessoa. I basically created pastiches of his poems, I began to write aspiring to be Alberto Caeiro; the eye, the worldly matter, it was as if I had found myself, as if I had discovered the possibility of writing by being someone who simply sees the world. And then there’s Jorge de Sena, Gastão Cruz, Cesariny, Luís Miguel Nava, and I always make a point of saying that I owe these poets, I don’t want to hide my debts, my masters, my contemporaries. And this doesn’t make me any bigger or lesser; this simply discloses me the way I am, it’s merely an honest gesture. I don’t think it’s clever for one to look as if they went against everything and everyone, that’s not the truth.

JF: About your poetry, Carlos Mendes de Sousa summarises your relation to other poets the following way: “the sophisticated simplicity of Bandeira; the reflexive profoundness of Drummond; the syntax of João Cabral; the lightness of Eugénio de Andrade and the clarity of Sophia”. Do you agree? Are these joyful influences on your poetry?

 If I had all that, I’d be a splendid poet! (laughs)

JF: What is the lightness in Eugénio de Andrade?

 Lightness has to do with the matter you seek, with the world you pay attention to and, above all, with the world you create. Eugénio’s world is light. He talked about seeking a syllable so many times: a syllable would save him from darkness, from sadness. A syllable. To seek that syllable is not light, it’s not easy. It’s a terrible quest. It’s work and fundamentally it’s demanding that poetry rip a small, brief thing from the world with the potential to irradiate, to overcome the shadow, the melancholy. It’s a lot, this is to demand a lot from life and from writing, to think that a syllable can do all this. So lightness is absolutely not a minor thing, quite the opposite. You know, sometimes it’s easier to write in favour of weight, of density, of shadow…

JF: And sometimes it’s easier to be grandiloquent.

It is. So you find greatness and radicalism in the small gestures... Eugénio’s poetry shows that synthesis, that minimal economy, which is different from a certain minimalism in visual arts, very cold, strictly intellectual. Eugénio’s geometry is very sensitive, it’s got a lot of tenderness.

JF: I’ve read you see yourself as a “working poet” in the sense you are a poet-artisan of words. Let’s change perspectives: do you see yourself as a full-time poet and not do any work apart from this particular one?

In my case, I love to work (laughs). I like to work with my hands, to do things, to be active; I’m a doer. I couldn’t stand to stay home by myself, writing poems, not matter how much of a workshop that might be, and it is. No, I need to gather people, edit books, you know? If I see her photos [Joana Dilão’s] and like them, I’ll want to put out a book (laughs). Shall we write a book? So, now I want to have a book and… I like this place, what could I do here? We could have a poetry recital there, but if it’s a recital we should have music… do you know any string quartets? We could add a string quartet to the reading, at sunset. Shall we do that? Let’s go! See what I mean? I’m already inventing things, fast-paced, and I like this kind of work, because I like to create, I like to do things. What I like to do the most is poetry, although I don’t want to just do poetry. However, if I had to confine myself to one thing only, it would be poetry, undoubtedly so, because it would be a lot more than work.

JF: You’ve edited several anthologies: Caetano, Adriana Calcanhotto, etc. Do you think there’s a difference between the lyrics of a song and a poem? I don’t think this is even an issue in Brazil…

It’s not that that problem doesn’t exist in Brazil, it’s just that it’s easily solved, because in Brazil popular songs have reached a very high standard for some time now, and in some cases they have even surpassed poetry published in books, no doubt about that. Everything you ask of book poetry – the sophisticated simplicity of Manuel Bandeira, the essential density of Eugénio de Andrade, the lightness – everything that he [Carlos Mendes de Sousa] has written about seems to describe a possible facet of Caetano Veloso or Adriana Calcanhoto, or Chico Buarque, you know? Brazil has many splendid songwriters and an archive of songs which is so stunning that to me that problem is not a problem anymore. Amongst other things, I am a professor and the university in Brazil pays much attention to popular songs, so there are many dissertations and doctoral theses on songwriters. There are many on Caetano; I’ve just supervised another on Adriana. On Chico Buarque, where to start, there are several, and so on and so forth… Even the university itself is already quite permeable to that presence of song lyrics, of songs in the context of academic research.

JF: Right. I think some boundaries have already been broken in Portugal but there’s still this idea that there are two cultures, the idea of hierarchy...

 I think Brazil had a facilitator, a very intimate contact with American pop culture, in addition to the quality of the songs themselves, which reinforced that presence and respect. So, in the American world of the sixties, hierarchy, high and low culture had already been thrown into the rubbish bin of History because the pop world was so incredible, the language was so radical, that everything you looked for in high culture, you could find in low culture, which was carrying everything out in a much more interesting, innovative way that museum art or books. And Brazil was always very open to that whilst Portugal was confined to a small-minded, xenophobic dictatorship. Brazil also went through a dictatorship but it was the kind of regime which was friendly towards the Americans. It was an international dictatorship, shall we say. We were able to derive a good thing from the horror.

JF: What’s it like to write poetry for children?

I call it poetry for childhood, I like that category; also, Adriana told me something that I love and I’ve adopted, which is “censure-free.” I mean, anyone can read it. I would say that the other books are not for everyone. “Censure-free” is when the child can read it and also the adult. Concerning the other books, it’s not that only adults can read them, it’s just that children wouldn’t find them interesting at all. Really, it’s censure-free.  Writing for children is a different experience.

JF: Do you think about the addressee?

That’s right, the difference is that I do think about an addressee. Now, where do the differences lie? In poetry for childhood I’ve got the exact same concerns that guide me when I write for an entirely adult audience. The same formal care, the same need to turn the poem into a rigorous object, manufactured, existentially dense. I don’t make things easy for children, you know? I don’t try to be easy or light, not at all. And I’m never didactic, no teachings, I don’t teach children anything, I can’t. Quite the opposite, if anyone were to learn anything, it would be me from them. I’ve got nothing to teach. Adults think they need to teach something because they’ve learned things over time, but mostly they’ve learned rubbish, there’s no point teaching it. Come on, teach what, how to be sad? To not sleep? To have insomnia, to think about money, to pine for love? Those are terrible things! Anything positive that adults may have, children have in abundance, so they should teach us. I don’t want to teach anything. I think that oftentimes poetry for childhood wants to teach things, it’s didactic, but I don’t do that. Not all good lessons are true – “we’re all friends” – no, we’re not all friends. Do you see what I mean? That “you have to respect”… respect the family, please, spare me (laughs). The opposite, you know? When I write for children I try to be quite close to the child’s freedom.

JF: I think the danger in literature for childhood is the indoctrination of children. And I’m also concerned about the moral of the story.

No, no moral of the story. Some poems are actually very amoral in the sense that their aim is to enhance something in the child that predates morals. For example, I quite like children who are misfits because adults always think that the child adapts to everything and that the world is something which makes them happy, but that’s not true. I remember when I was a child and children are often sad, misfits... The poem “O Marciano” (“The Martian”) [from the book Bicho de Sete Cabeças e outros Seres Fantásticos] is told from a first-person perspective and it’s about a child, girl or boy, gauche.

Não tenho antena na testa

e não sou esverdeado.

Mas quer saber de uma coisa?

 

Quando estou aborrecido,

e não quero ver ninguém,

eu me sinto um marciano!

So, it’s a not a Martian who comes from Mars, it’s someone who feels like a Martian. Now, feeling like a Martian is a horrible feeling, it’s not pleasant. I don’t want to blame children for certain feelings. “O Lobisomem” (“The Werewolf”) [from the same book] is a terrifying poem.

Pobre lobisomem,

porque é lobo,

porque é homem,

porque é lobo e homem.

 

Pobre lobisomem,

porque é sozinho,

porque é triste,

porque é triste e sozinho.

 

Pobre lobisomem,

porque tem garras,

porque tem pelos,

porque tem patas,

 

e porque tem garras,

pelos e patas,

o pobre lobisomem

fere o que ama.

 

I don’t want to hide the fact that the child is going to hurt and get hurt, despite love, and that it’s going to be like that forever, right? We often hurt the ones we love, so not even love is compact and free of crevices. Now, funnily enough, I was talking about joy and lightness and then as far as children are concerned I make everything worse, harsher, right?

JF: However, the characters which could be perceived as frightful are shown in their humane, fun side.

And I like things like that. For example: we often feel a big, strange thing inside, like a fierce lizard. The dragon [reference to another poem from the same book] is not something outside you, it’s something inside. When you get rid of it, you get rid of something you should keep.

Mas se mudamos de assunto

e esquecemos o dragão,

tudo fica bem tranquilo,

tudo assim: sem emoção.

 

Sem um problema qualquer,

fica tão sem graça

na nossa imaginação...

que não acontece nada!

 

Esse nada pode ser...

Adivinhe, adivinhe...

 

O DRAGÃO!

 

So, the dragon is the problem but not just the problem you’ve got, it can also be the problem you haven’t got, that is, not having a problem can be a problem: it’s a void, you know? Fear keeps you alive, right? That’s what sustains life. Anyway...I love writing for children. Besides, I feel completely free from paying dues to influences, categories, which authors I interact with, whatever.

JF: That’s true, that’s unfair to the work of a poet.

It’s a two-pronged thing. Poetry for childhood is not valued fairly, so most critics think there’s no point thinking about it. It’s a real shame, for criticism helps the author to think about what they do and also criticism can learn a lot from the authors it examines. On the other hand, because very little is pondered about poetry for childhood, authors work with great freedom. I mean, no one goes looking for influences, questioning whether the form chosen here or there could have worked out better another way… nobody is going to demand that I reinvent language and change the course of contemporary poetry.

JF: Unless it’s someone who’s writing a thesis on children’s and adolescent literature.

No, they wouldn’t.  Even those theses can draw comparisons, but they’re not telling me to pay my dues the way it usually happens with poetry in general, which I think is an excessive demand. And it comes from poets themselves, from the community of poets, from professors, from critics.

JF: And do you check children’s book illustrations?

Ah, that’s another facet of the joy involving children’s books. Do you know André da Loba? I discovered André da Loba. I knew the kind of illustrations I wanted. I didn’t want drawings nor pictures, nothing two-dimensional; I’d imagine sculptures and wished I had something modern, halfway between Matisse and something else I didn’t quite know what it was. At any rate, in my head I devised everything that André da Loba does, only I didn’t know his work. And I always choose my illustrators, because I like that, I’m enthralled; my publishers always give me complete freedom to find the  illustrator, only in this case I hadn’t got anyone and everything I saw on the internet and books was perhaps excellent but not exactly what I was looking for. And then one day, I don’t know how, I found André da Loba and I said “My God, that’s it! I’ve dreamed about this!” When we got in touch and everything fell into place, he loved it, he hadn’t illustrated children’s books before, it was the first time. So I find books for childhood delightful because I’m completely involved with the graphic project, with the illustrations and with the visual world I’m so interested in. And then there’s the audience: the children say “I loved your book” and adults never tell me they loved my books with this kind of spontaneity and enthusiasm! “I loved your book! Can I read it?”; I tell them, “you can” and they read to me and speak of incredible things… So you’re contributing to someone’s upbringing as a reader and that’s a fantastic feeling.

JF: To go back to poetry for adults, in the poem “Ideal” from this new book you talk about a gang.

That’s a peculiar poem because it’s a game of mirrors based on a poem by Golgona Anghel (from the book Como uma Flor de Plástico na Montra de um Talho); it’s practically Golgona’s poem, only rewritten, slightly altered. She’s also invited by a gang, that’s the start of her poem. So I followed her poem, drawing nearer, and that’s why she’s quoted, she’s part of the same gang, she’s going to belong to a gang and I’m going to belong to the gang which Golgona belongs to.

JF: What kind of gang?

The gang of poets and outlaws (laughs).

JF: And those outlaws would be on the fringe of a certain official discourse about poets. What’s your opinion on the relation between poetry and official discourse, political power?

Look, poetry is something strange and estranged from power, always. Poetry is speaking outside power, it’s retreating to somewhere outside power, that’s what poetry is. On principle, poetry is to refuse the coercive power of language; it’s essentially seeking a place located outside power. So, it will never be fully at ease in the realm of power institutions… But it is desirable that the State takes an interest in culture by means of certain institutions. You can’t romanticise it too much because cultural, artistic life needs some kind of support. Poetry fundamentally exists in books; it depends on publishers, on readers, and for there to be readers you need schools. A state education policy is inevitably needed for poetry to exist. Furthermore, it is essential there be publishers, distributers, bookshops, consumer programmes, criticism, the press, opinion; all in all, you need production and circulation, that is, nobody is outside the circuit. Thus, to think about poetry as free from cultural, historical, social, economic contingencies is a fragile romanticism, a naiveté. However, poetry will never serve any institution. There’s something in it which is unwavering to power and that’s what really matters, and that’s why I’d like to draw attention to the poem you’ve just quoted, about the gangue, to reinforce that idea of the poet as someone on the fringe.

JF: In a world of poems only, and of fewer poets, which would your favourite poem be?

(laughs) That’s not easy, that’s a difficult one, but I’d like to answer it; I hate not answering. It would be… “Procura da Poesia” (“The Search for Poetry”), by Carlos Drummond de Andrade.

JF: Have you experienced any kind of linguistic and/or poetic annoyance?

No, I haven’t experienced bickering. At any rate, any word, any solution can be in the poem in the best possible way; it all depends on how everything fell into place, if that is in fact born out of the necessity for expression and whether that expression is the fairest. So all can be done, all can be said.

JF: What about literary criticism? Do you like to read reviews about you?

Yes, I do.

JF: What do you enjoy to read the most about you?

There are always some aspects I’d like to see discussed, but I’m not going to say what those are.

JF: We’ve got a “Marginalia” section, about literary curiosities. Is there any you’d like to share with us?

I don’t know if it’s exactly a curiosity. I met Sophia; Gastão Cruz took me to her house and it was very emotional and important to me, I´ll never forget that. Later, I transformed that encounter into a poem. Then it would be it, I would say that to me it was remarkable.

Translated by Rita Faria

[1] Translated by Richard Zenith (in Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe. Selected Poems, Penguin, 2006).