Author Spotlight: Interview Antonio R Arenas

Sistah’s Place weekly spotlight for new authors is Antonio Rolando Arenas. Antonio talks about his book called Dialogos Internos talks about why he wrote it and what was the inspiration behind his debut book. He shares what’s next for him. Grab your favorite snack and beverage to sit back and get to know a little about Antonio R. Arenas in our Q&A session.

Tell us about who you are as author

The author of the book “Diálogos internos” is me. There was always talk if the donkey goes first, but in this case, it is valid. Who is that “I”? That “I” is called Antonio Rolando Arenas. Name and surname that my parents gave me. I was born in Mendoza, Argentina. I had a relatively happy childhood that began to erupt in adolescence. And many of these experiences are trapped in the poetry of the book as a memory, as a painful nostalgia, as a transition, as a testimony.
The truth is that in my childhood I was in contact with illustrated books in colors such as Pinocchio, Snow White, The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella. My father sold these books, brought them home, and I read and entertained them. My mother at night told me the story of the Bantam Rooster. “Do you want to know what that story is? Come over to this side. “
In elementary school, in the music room, he enjoyed songs by Maria Elena Walsh. Already in adolescence, I frequented books like “El Martín Fierro”, hagiographies of Santos, and the “Praise of madness” by Erasmo that my younger brother snatched from my hands in a day of fury.
I am a changing person who, although he writes poetry, stories, and even a novel, does different activities. I am a teacher in Spanish Language and Literature but the books and my writing obey another god.
I am not a bad person. I am not a good person. I am the author of the book, this one, and the others. I am conservative in some aspects, but I have a concern for social injustices because I have lived them and I have tried to be a caring person, and yet I have seen petty situations that have made me change my mind.
I don’t have enough money to travel from one country to another and be a cosmopolitan person, but I do have money to not know what hunger is for people who look in the garbage cans for something to eat.

What was it that made you decide to write a book?

The fact that several people showed their enthusiasm when reading my poetry made me write a book. And since these poems were scattered, and sometimes I published them in a magazine, or in an anthology, or in some cultural supplement of a newspaper in Argentina, I made the decision to publish them in a book. Not only for personal interest but for the fact of consolidating my position as a poet in front of others. Much is said that I am a poet, much is said that I am a writer and so it is with other people who take photographs in newspapers with fashion politicians. And then where is the work? Here is my work in this book called “Diálogos internos”. There is the result, there is the fact of writing. And that’s what made me decide to write a book, which was not born overnight because it resulted from the effort, it resulted from having to bite the alfalfa between my teeth while walking from one place to another because sometimes I did not have enough money to get on a bus.

So I was going from an official’s office to a writer’s house to get advice. I went to a print shop to ask for a budget to finalize the book. I was going to a literary workshop to learn a literary resource and improve a page in the book. I enthusiastically went to a poet’s talk to learn what I did not know until then.
This experience gave me ideas to get to the book as a result of my writing, as a result of my poetic attitude. It was not easy. Sometimes I found, like the Little Prince, disinterested and even ignorant people in this purpose of mine to get to the book that they asked me to abandon, to dedicate myself to something else because it was useless. But I had perseverance and became more and more concerned about getting to the book that today distributors have managed to bring to different online bookstores for the enjoyment of readers.

What inspired your book title, and is this fiction or non-fiction?

The title of the book was inspired by a poem in the book on page 26 entitled “Internal Dialogues.” And he says: “Again the voices that influence my cracked man’s walk invade. Internal dialogues; urgent conversations impossible answers like silence of the birds that penetrate the sea. Again, with unjust passion they subdue me, emancipating the crystalline identity from which the incorruptible essence navigates.
It is poetry. But it is valid to think if there is also fiction in poetry because in poetry there is lyricism, there is a poetic self, but is there fiction? There are in this book poetic situations that are inspired or born from reality, from what the poet lived and that is not fiction, but there are also subjective situations born from the poet and that have been written with the intention of reaching a possible world and that’s fiction.
There is fiction in this poetry with the title “Response” that says: “Barking thief, peasant brick what do I want I listen to music [pa-ra-pa-pa-pá] light on Stove Shadow hand birome Figures on paper What I do? I don’t know.
There is fiction in that poetry but there is also synthesis and a poetic construction through the word that has to do with intuition, that has to do with improvisation. And it is the reflection of the poet’s interiority.
And I believe here that fiction has to do with that possible world that the poet helps to build and leaves it expressed in writing on a paper that later becomes a page and is now part of a book, of this book that is titled “Diálogos internos”.
A book that brings together my poetic exercises carried out between 1982 and 2014 in order to specify a necessary and humanistic testimony.

Without giving too much away, tell us what your story is about?

It deals with different poems written between the years 1982 and 2014 in which the themes range from nostalgia to love, from warlike interest to social concern caused by debt and political corruption. There is also an intention for memory and childhood. And all this has been possible by spending several hours away from the television at a time when the internet did not exist and the cell phone did not appear yet. A time when poets were scarce and could not access Facebook. There is also political poetry here that sometimes goes unnoticed because the recipients are entertained with different things or because reading does not mobilize them but that upon receiving this stimulus the cognitive structure is moved. And not only them, the poet too. And so begins feedback that feeds and helps build other possible worlds that become an interview or a narrative for another book.
So, a person as a poet builds this story synthesized in the image on the cover of the book, which is the story of that child portrayed with a donkey and which is the reflection of that dialogue that inspires moves, and mobilizes him, of that dialogue that stimulates him day by day, to get away from those contaminated and toxic people who fill him with obstacles and problems, with the intention of living in a different way, expectant and without action to be immersed in the corridor of political marginality from where it emerges with his voice, a poetic voice that comes to make a necessary testimony and that is necessary humanistic.
A story that deals with perseverance and the responsibility to fulfill oneself so as not to deceive and not to stay on the poet posters and business cards with hollow content and no sound. A story with gamble and failure, but with an intrinsic message. A story with a future. A story at last.

Is there a message you like readers to walk away with after reading your book?

The main message is that readers, literary circles, journalists, literature teachers, culture officials, have available a book that although it took time to appear, it took time to get published, was carried out with that intention.
And from that message they will have the possibility of accessing the different poetic texts that I was writing between 1982 and 2014 to read for reading, to read for pleasure and entertainment, to read critically, to read and study literature, to read and study a poet.
Because the literature is there. The poetry that I conceived is there between the different pages of this book. A book that is a monument, a tribute to itself and with which I shared many hours, days, months, and years of work, of unease, of joy, of enthusiasm, of hope, in this human experience that is life.
A different life, with changes, eager to move forward and develop capacities that are so characteristic of intellect with interests. A modest life, with surprises and without so many surprises. A man’s life in a world that moves and changes its paradigms. So poetry. And that is the message, to capture a testimony that is written here in this book.

What makes your book stand out from all the rest in your genre?

This is a question that publishers who accept my manuscripts usually ask me. First of all, my book stands out because it is an event that brings together a particular voice, which in this case is my poetic voice and that can also be the voice of those who do not have a voice because they work every day and are fatigued, or because the Time does not give them enough place to work and develop it, or because they are silenced by the knots that life has made for them and they have to take care of a sick family member or worry about a child who is learning to walk, or they are arguing all the time with your partner to find out how they can live together in a room with a kitchen and a nightstand.

Secondly, it stands out for the originality embodied in the development of the different themes, in the treatment of lyrical skills and in the use of some resources that somehow demonstrate the mastery of expressive ability with poetic intentions.

Third, it stands out because it moves away from stagnation and does not give in to editorial impossibilities. It goes further. It expands in distribution. Search channels. Exceeds geographies. That is to say that it does not stay in the pompous presentation of office between relatives and friends. He goes to the street and transcends.

What’s next for you as an author? Will there be more books?

For me, it follows a tireless reflection on what I write, on the way of living, on the way of being. There are changes? Of course, there is a more insinuating internet presence in this writing task. When I started to sketch the first pages of the book, I did it with typewriters and I even had to take typing courses. There are revolutions that accelerate the way of living in this 21st century while I am sleeping or while I am in a conversation with another person. I don’t see butterflies fluttering around my garden anymore, like when I was a child. Now there are cell phones in each of the hands of each man, of each woman who lives in my city. It is the same world, but another, different. Very different.

That there will be more books, of course. I am now preparing narrative books and as I write them, I am thinking of changing their form or continue using the traditional form of the cover and sheets of paper. I came with this book to the electronic book, but will this be the only format to use or will there be another way to write it, interspersing videos, performance, so that the book catches and is not just a suitcase with letters and words. Yes. There will be more books, but we will have to wait for them to finish writing them.

Who are some of your favorite authors?

Sometimes I have books under my pillow, others on the table for tea, but by giving names Ray Bradbury comes to mind with his “Martian Chronicles” and his ability to build a possible world on another planet , Armando Tejada Gómez a poet to read and not forget, since I attended his recitals when he was allowed to return to the country of the sun, after the dark night of the dictatorship, José Hernández with his “Martín Fierro” because it allows me to understand a country in transformation that goes from nothingness of the desert to the legal organization of the city that advances and when walking through those geographies one assimilates the injustices and ironies that life teaches.

Hope you enjoyed Antonio’s Q&A interview. Don’t forget to pick up your copy.

Follow him on social media to learn more about him.

https://www.facebook.com/antoniorolando.arenas

Twitter: @NewraNet 

Instagram: antoniorolandoarenas 

http://www.sbpraauthorapps.com/bdbbldwebfly.php?isbn=9781948858427

Where to purchase his book?