Maylan Álvarez and her poetry «Al filo de la vida» (On the edge of life).

With her book of poems «A mi también me olvidarán», writer Maylan Álvarez won this year’s Orlando García Lorenzo Critics’ Prize, awarded by the UNEAC Writers’ Association in Matanzas.

…and only the knife showed its face,/ with a slight sparkle,/ reminding me how exciting/ it can be to live on the edge,/ always on the edge of life».

With the collection of poems «A mi también me olvidarán», writer Maylan Alvarez won this year’s Orlando Garcia Lorenzo Critics’ Prize, awarded by the Writers’ Association of the UNEAC in Matanzas.

This book of 32 poems, divided into three sections, with which she also won the City Foundation Award 2023, seals a way of expressing her experiences as a woman, mother, worker, housewife, lover… from the vestiges of childhood, exploring a youth marked by family whims until arriving at the true feminine universe facing life and the rigors of home.

It would seem, I tell her, when arranging the meeting, that this text is a continuity of her previous works, among these «Naufragios del San Andrés», «Otras lecturas del cuerpo» and «Yo he de parecerme a tantas cosas», Luis Rogelio Nogueras Award 2022, but… when reading verse by verse each page of the aptly named «A mi también me olvidarán», subtle ruptures are observed, more contemporary advances, to which Maylan Álvarez expresses:

«Now I have a more distant voice, with other ways of saying, other experiences. I appreciate an evolution, I don’t know if it’s in the way of saying, but my poetics is different.

«I write with new ways and desires to express myself at this point in my life, which leads me to have another look when reflecting women from other personal events.

«I bring to the letter what I know, my environment. I will never write as an astronaut if I don’t live that experience. I write from my known world and what I like or what overwhelms me. Maybe I repeat myself in the formulas: my people, my roots, my family, or I go back to what I question about my known universe, but that is our existence: the woman, the children, love, the sadnesses…»

«…With the passing of the years,/ I,/ with more than one child,/ learned more to give/ than to ask.»

Of this work, the relevant writer Laura Ruiz Montes commented:

«Maylan Álvarez is attracted to stories full of bonds, sutures, survival mechanisms, mammalian topography, flat feet, birthday portraits and people hugging each other.

«Because those are the stories she inhabits, as she pays the electric bill, picks up clean clothes and softens beans, hoping there will be time left to rewrite a poem about her childhood, while she believes (only she believes), that she will be forgotten. As if that were possible after immersing ourselves in these pages».

Maylan Álvarez has been awarded numerous national prizes and the publication of more than a dozen books, in addition to being anthologized in several international collections.

She is from Matanzas, born in Unión de Reyes and currently works as editor of Matanzas magazine and publishing house. She also manifests herself before the public in her roles of excellent communicator and promoter of the spoken verse, vocations that she exercises in continuous presentations throughout the province, the country and abroad.

«They will forget me,/ I said to myself,/ and the others too».

Written by María Elena Bayón.