Karmelo C. Iribarren: "Poetry is better than Prozac"

• Carlos Alsina "Go filming the IBEX that they don't obey even their candidates"

Ravenous reader, he began to write very young poems in a self-taught way, almost blindly. Poems without artifice then nobody read and many of whom he wrote at the bar of the cocktail bar where he worked. Today Karmelo C. Iribarren (Donosti, 1959) has a legion of followers, as evidenced by the fact that four anthologies of his verses have been published.

We are in a hotel bar and you like hotels. What fascinates you about them? I like them because it seems that I am anywhere and nowhere. The hotel is a transitory place: you come from somewhere, you go to another, but at that time you don't belong anywhere. In hotels I feel nowhere. And I like that, because I am quite uprooted, I have no desire for any place. I live here in Donostia, but I could have lived somewhere else, had been born somewhere else, and I wouldn't have care. One of his poems, 'The rest are stories' comes to mind, in which he says that, from To be something, his homeland would be his wife and daughter, his books, a handful of friends and some bars. Yes. I do not argue that people feel their country, want it and feel part of it. But in the end the real homeland for me are those four people and those four things that you live in and I don't know if you're happy, but you try. The other does not cause me any excessive passion. Perhaps because here the homeland has always been so alive that it has made me tired. Do you have to suffer to write poetry? I think not, that you don't have to suffer to write certain poetry. Although that of suffering is very personal: each one suffers as he suffers and for what he suffers. There are many ways to suffer, suffering has many qualities and intensities. That said, to talk about certain sufferings in poetry it gives me that if one has passed them it transmits them with another intensity, I do not say that better or worse, but another. So yes, having suffered helps write poetry. If you write hermetic poems or surrealist poems I suppose it does not matter, but if you write life poems as I do they only convey truthfulness and authenticity if you have had something to do with all that. Have you suffered then? I have suffered enough in this life, but enough. I have not had much luck in many things. But hey, I don't do a drama about that either. On the other hand, here I am. But I've had my ration of suffering, yes. Has poetry helped you deal with suffering? Yes, it has helped me. Somehow, writing is taking out all your ghosts and bad times, exorcising them. You can even talk about some therapy. Is poetry better than Prozac? I believe that poetry is better than Prozac, although the truth is that I have not tried prozac, I did not pass the Orfidal. I love the Orfidal, it leaves you relaxed, like a cork. But, on the other hand, I am not against the pharmacopoeia, Prozac seems to me a good invention: I have seen people who were having a bad time and some pills have helped them to be well. What else has poetry served for? What poetry has served me most is to be in the world. What have I done in this world? Eye, it's not that I didn't do anything, I've done what I could. But now that the years have passed I say: I have written this book, I have written this one. I have done something. But I have written poetry because I couldn't do it either. Many of his poems he wrote in the bar where he worked for years. If I hadn't worked at night I would have been a poet too? I think so. And I think he would have been a similar poet. I have worked more than 20 years at night, but if I had not worked at night I would have lived equally at night. I was a stray of the night, of the alcohol, of the drinks ... What happens is that I passed, I spent a lot. How long have I not drunk? Since 92. There came a time when I thought it was All I did was work at the bar and get drunk, and I wanted to do more things, I wanted to write, but I didn't have the time. I was going to work at the bar, when I left I went for drinks, I came home at 8 in the morning and when I got up, I returned to currelar. It was a life too small. Many of my friends are still there ... Many will have ended badly, I imagine ... Most. Some are gone and others I see them wrong. Because it was hard. So I told myself that could not continue. One day, I also had a hangover, I went to work at the bar and decided to stop drinking, and I did. And ten years ago, smoking, because I smoked even my eyelashes. Doesn't his poetry go unscathed? I wish it were. I would like the one who comes to my poetry not to come out the same as it enters, I would like to say that something is there for the reader to acknowledge the blow. To me the poetry that I always like is the one that hits me, the one that grabs me by the flap and shakes me, the one that after reading it I notice that something has happened to me. Nor are we going to exaggerate, but I like that poetry that when you read it you feel that something new has entered your life. When did you start calling yourself a poet? Never. If you call yourself a 'poet' they look at you weird and tell the police or the doctors at the hospital. Ángel González said that one is a poet when he is writing a poem, and I think he is right. At that moment, there, if you are a poet, you act as a poet and put everything you know. Have you been called 'moñas' many times for being a poet? He has another poem in which a friend warns him that as he continues writing on paper napkins in the bars they will end up loading the poet's sambenito "and then, to see what hosts you do." One, especially at the beginning, is a bit exposed To the little derision. Now maybe less, but before someone wrote poems, he was seen as soft. 30 years ago there were irony, even teasing. But I think that is already overcome. Does being a poet help to flirt? From what I see out there, young people do. When I go to Madrid and see the young poets, it seems to me that they link. After all, poetry gives you a certain aura. But it has not been my case. And even if it had been, I wouldn't tell him.

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