La Voz de Galicia – July 17, 2020 →
I am the kind of person who falls in love with poetry through music. Each one of us has our own way of discovering beauty, and even though poetry is also sound, for me, it is music that makes me feel profoundly moved by poetry. Perhaps this is because I learned to grow through music, and it was music that opened my eyes to discover other worlds and other arts, especially literature.
As an accompanying pianist (by training and vocation) I learned Goethe’s poetry through Schubert’s music, and Verlaine’s through Fauré’s. In the case of Galician poetry, the collection of Galician poems in the series devoted to Antonio Fernández Cid opened my eyes to another way of understanding the relationship between poetry and music in this language. I also fell in love again with Yolanda Castaño’s poetry through Rosa Cedrón’s music, and with Uxío Novoneyra’s through Emilio Cao’s and the great Uxía Senlle’s.
This is why, this week when Novoneyra’s visual verses became part of the clothing line of the global brand par excellence, Zara, I celebrate those who, throughout the world, discover beauty through sight, and who are now able to relate to Novoneyra’s calligraphic poetry. And through him, to other Galician poetry, or simply to Galicia, or simply to the Galician language, because without a doubt, it will awaken others’ curiosity. And if, as Novoneyra said, «Speech is the only place where ancestors continue to live, the only audible way of survival,» now seeing his creations printed in an article of clothing that will reach all corners of the world makes one reflect on the survival of language in the digital era… Is a t-shirt capable of opening doors to discover a book, and with it, speech, and with it, a way of thinking?
