Of white bells in the Caiguranal of the happy childhood, the peasant roots and the longings to visit distant places from a city of the East of the Largest of the Antilles, the multilaureate poet, decimist and writer Ronel Gonzalez, opens his heart in genuine Cuban heartbeat, to the dialogue in exclusive with this digital portal.
In 2023 you received the Raúl Gómez García medal for more than 25 years as worker of the Sindicato de la Cultura, you obtained the national prizes of poetry America Bobia, of the 26th of July Contest of the FAR, in poetry and in decima -being the first author in obtaining two prizes in the history of the contest-, the Cintio Vitier Creation Scholarship of the UNEAC for a literary research project and also mentions in the Julio Cortázar Ibero-American Short Story Prize, the Emilio Ballagas National Prize of Camagüey and the Hermanos Loynaz Contest of Pinar del Río.
What do these new awards represent in your professional and creative career?
“I’ve worked very hard since I started writing in the early 1980s, so I’ve been in the literary world for more than 40 years, so receiving these awards is part of a great motivation to continue. I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the awards. I celebrate them with my family, friends and co-workers, but I assure you that they don’t make me feel vain; on the contrary, they commit me to creation and to my creative quests.
Do you recreate in your work experiences of your hometown?
“San Pedro de Cacocum is a constant reference in my conversations and in much of my work. Proof of them are the stories for children in La enigmática historia de Doceleguas -José María Heredia 2008 National Prize in literature for children, published in 2010 by Ediciones Caserón of the UNEAC of Santiago de Cuba- and in Relatos de Ninguna Parte -First Mention in the National Prize of Literature for children and young people La Edad de Oro 2010, published in 2013 by Ediciones Holguín-, also my town is in my poems, in my décimas and even in some still unpublished story.
“The atmosphere of many stories and other texts has been given to me by Cacocum and it will surely continue to appear in some way because I have a very vital relationship with my little town”.
How could that natural environment have influenced your work?
“From Cacocum I keep in my memory a tiny river that I wouldn’t change even for the Orinoco that I saw in my adulthood, some fields to play ball that no longer exist, trees that I used to climb, unpaved streets where I used to go to school, a canal that no longer carries anything, but through which water flowed and there were fish, the bridge they call the elevated bridge there, immense metal tanks that vanished with the passing of time, the immemorial passing of trains that appear and disappear, the sugar mills, the years my father worked in the sugar cane fields, the central highway, two or three schools where I studied all that and more, even the municipal cemetery is in my work. How could there not be so many places and beings always wrapped in a halo of love/hate?
“I lived there until 1992, although some time ago I had come to Holguin to study at the José Martí Vocational School and then I had gone to study at the University of Oriente in Santiago de Cuba. Nobody can imagine the degree of emotion that I experience when I return to Cacocum and how many things I owe to it as an eternal apprentice writer”.
What memories does your childhood bring back?
“Many. My first five years I lived in Caguairanal, a neighborhood about eight kilometers from town. From there I have the indelible smell of the flowers of the Júpiter -Júpito they called it-, the white bells full of dew, frequented by bees, a very deep well where biajacas and jicoteas, palms, ceibas, carob trees, güiras, guácimas, yuccas swam.
“Tojosas and wood pigeons, black and white cats that I played with, the majá that my father killed because it came to my house to eat the chickens, the owls that screamed at night and grandmother said they were birds of bad omen, the insects that fluttered in the extensive guaninal, pigs everywhere, my first encounters with the rural school, the fear of a madman who hid nearby, falling asleep while they played the Nocturno program on the radio and a vision of the forest that I can’t forget.
“Already in those years (1971-1976) I had heard singing décimas and knew what sadness was. Then came the move to Cacocum. I started elementary school, then high school. My teacher Magaly González. The municipal library. The first verses I wrote. The literary workshop. I didn’t have a city with wooden horses or a fairy to tell me what to do with loneliness… I think I write because I don’t forget my childhood”.
If you hadn’t been born in that environment, would you be an advocate of those themes?
“Maybe not. That part of my life was fundamental in my formation.”
To what extent has your mother figure determined your literary interest?
“My mother always supported me. She instilled in me an interest in reading and poetry. She had books that I read and I read. Through her I got to know the literary workshop at the Casa de la Cultura where she worked.”
You are recognized as a poet, decimist, literary researcher. However, in the novel genre no work is known. Do you have any project?
“I wrote a short novel that last year received mention in the Emilio Ballagas Award. I have three more in the process of writing and a novelette for children.”
Your poem “Albatros de Baudelaire”, received in 2023 the America Bobia National Award from the Vigia Publishing House of Matanzas. In verses of that poem you say that “The island will be forever submerged in my flesh…”
“That is a poem about the subject of emigration, a topic that startles us daily. In these verses the speaker incorporates the personality of the individual who decides to abandon everything, therefore, it is a poem written with a lot of pain. Emigration is an inevitable worldwide phenomenon. It is also a human right and it touches us closely. I use the Baudelairean symbol of the albatross to underline the universality of the idea”.
You have received important national and some international awards. Are you the same poet with or without them?
“Los premios alegran, se celebran, ayudan, impulsan, motivan. Si llegan, bien, pero lo más importante no es enviar ni recibirlos, sino hacer la obra, ser muy exigente con uno mismo. No soy el mismo poeta sin los premios porque esos resultados han visualizado un poco lo que escribo, pero puedo ingeniármelas sin ellos, porque ningún premio me hace sentir diferente ni creerme lo que no soy. Ojalá yo pudiera publicar un libro que fuera leído por muchas personas. Eso sí me haría feliz”.
“Awards bring joy, they are celebrated, they help, they encourage, they motivate. If they come, good, but the most important thing is not to send or receive them, but to do the work, to be very demanding with oneself. I am not the same poet without the awards because those results have visualized a bit what I write, but I can manage without them, because no award makes me feel different or make me believe I am not what I am. I wish I could publish a book that would be read by many people. That would make me happy.
What are the hours that Ronel prefers to write?
“The early morning and the first hours of the day. Above all, before the roosters start crowing”.
What readings and authors do you read when you’re not writing?
“Today I choose what I’m going to read. Usually what can bring me as a poet or as a researcher. The authors I research and the body of opinions about those authors.”
Of the current décimas written in Cuba, do you think they should be modernized in form and content?
“Poets have to keep trying to build a discourse that contributes to the history of the Cuban décima. A discourse in tune with this era and with the poetic personalities of the authors. It is necessary to look back only to avoid repeating the gains achieved. It is necessary to give another turn to the writing of the décima like the one we gave the poets who published our books from 1990 to now. That takes time, preparation, readings, talent, but it has to be done.
In your opinion, is writing for children’s audiences more difficult or less rigorous?
“It is also very difficult, necessary, fun, stimulating and I wish I could make some contribution, minimum, to the history of the genre in Cuba.”
Do you enjoy interacting with this group of readers?
“Always. From that relationship have come ideas for writing and even ways to take on the challenge. Getting close to the children and sharing with them feeds back into the writing.”
What do you experience when they read your works?
“It’s the greatest reward I can receive. I know of children who have books I’ve written and that thrills me. In some schools I have been surprised by children who know my poems by heart. That makes me feel useful and gives me back the image of the child I was.”
In your work as a literary researcher you have written about the National Literature Award 2022 Delfín Prats. What findings for universal and Cuban literature do you find in the poet of Lenguaje de mudos?
“We Cubans owe Delfin a brief but beautiful set of poems. He has been and is a poet in tenacious struggle with emptiness. His work, although as one of his verses says, has seen the constellations open up, without integrating or restricting itself to any expressive aspect, is located in the significant space between the conversationalism that occluded the avant-garde bias of previous decades and the rest of the poetic fluencies that took place in Cuban literature until well into the 1990s of the twentieth century. With very few tools Delfin manages to move us and make us feel the taste of the universal. That’s what interests me about what he wrote.
What is the greatest dream that the author of Consumación de la utopía has for the coming years?
“My greatest utopia, and need, is to continue creating. I would like to have health and time to be able to carry out new projects and others that are on the way. To read some books, write some short stories, four or five poems that I need and I’m already starting to visualize.”
Do you need Cuba, Holguin, to create your work?
“I was in Venezuela, I loved and love that country and there I wrote a book dedicated to children. It was a short time and maybe that’s why I felt off-center because I belong to these landscapes, to these mountains, to the sea that I would like to see more often to stay in silence while the waves break against the rocks.
“For cultural reasons I would like to be able to see the Mediterranean, to go to New York and Tampa where Martí was, loved and created in those places, to return to the plains of Venezuela that remind me so much of my early days, but without Cuba I do not exist. I cannot be without the décima, without the greatness of the Versos sencillos, La vuelta al bosque, la Noche insular, jardines invisibles, En la Calzada de Jesús del Monte, La isla en peso. Here I would like to extinguish myself, to dissolve between Cacocum and Gibara. Between the totíes that fuss when they see or hear a train go by and the excited strollers when they watch the Atlantic from the indomitable walls of the Fernando VII Battery. Is there anything more universal than that vision of endearing creatures and places? For me, no.
Ronel Gonzalez, of a greater height in the Cuban tenth and the literature for children, of prolific pen possesses the gifts of sincerity and sharpness in the dialogue.
Author of 53 works, laureate with the Distinction for the Cuban Culture, the Coat of Arms of the Province of Holguin, the Aldabon de La Periquera, symbol of the city of Holguin, and other national and international prizes. He has been recognized as Illustrious Son of Cacocum.
- Martín Arranz, the great maestro without a classroom - 12 de March de 2024
- Daniel: Concert with National Symphony Orchestra, my prize - 27 de February de 2024
- ArCAI to open a store at Casa Marco in Holguin - 19 de February de 2024