The National Poetry Prize, Chus Patotold me in an interview that poets have to be shameless because they have no other choice, “they stand in front of an audience to read things that are not validated and the only thing that valid is that it is sung by the people who speak their language, and that, normally, you go to the grave before seeing it.” A phrase applicable to politicians, although with nuances. More shameless if possible, but they are validated through the citizen vote. Some votes in which we place the trust that they will look after our interests and not only their own, that they will defend us responsibly.
The Community of Madrid has removed the nominal subsidy to the most important museums in the country: the Prado, Reina SofÃa and Thyssen. Those who will only be supported punctually, as long as they approach what they call “tourist icons”, a term that is more reminiscent of the Fair attractions than the headquarters of the Culture in capital letters. That Culture that sustains and shapes us as a society, that defines us as individuals, the one that they appeal to in speeches to try to make poetry. They place it as an ornament among the political arguments, like a good china, which in reality is a Lladró that they always have left over, too expensive for what useless and tacky it is.
Chus Pato also told me that the poems They are not immortalbut they do write forever. The same thing happens with the promises of the political class, they make them forever, but the reality is that they perish and are expired, they end up breaking easily, like porcelain. These are bad times for poetry, Golpes Bajos already said it, and I add, but worse for Culture and Policy in capital letters.