“Death as beauty is in my poetry”: Yuri Arias

UCundinamarca News had the opportunity to speak with this philosopher from the National University with a master's degree in Interdisciplinary Social Research from the District University, who acknowledges that every page of this work is imbued with Spanish, Colombian poetic influences and those from her career; a whole amalgam that leads her in this interview to describe herself as "a one hundred percent humanist".

UCundinamarca News. Where does the passion for writing poetry come from?

Yuri Magnolia Arias (YMA) I started writing very young and discovered that it was a way to express what I was going through. One day I had already written several poems and I showed them to a classmate, and she liked them a lot and encouraged me to keep writing. That's how I accumulated poems for years. Later, I worked for ten years in a program run by the Mayor's Office of Bogotá as a creative writing teacher, which was a way to foster social connections, and that enriched my work.

UCundinamarca News. What was the selection process for the poems like?

YMA: It's a detailed compilation project that I started in 2020 with my editor. It took us four months during the lockdown, and this also included the layout and editing processes.

UCundinamarca News. What is conveyed in each of these poems?

YMA: This book comprises all my poetic work from 1998 to 2020 in which I express my particular way of seeing the world from a philosophical vision and with a perspective of what I am feeling and thinking at the moment I sit down to write.

UCundinamarca News. What is the most recurring theme in the work?

YMA: The leitmotif of my work is the earth, death as beauty, the sun and some problems of love, but not with typical romanticism, but with depth.

UCundinamarca News. Which poets have influenced her?

YMA: Let's say that in my youth I admired Antonio Machado and Miguel Hernández, who are Spanish writers from the Generation of '98, and in my later years I admired the Portuguese Fernando Pessoa, and from Colombia I like Raúl Gómez Jattin and Nadaists like Jota Mario Arbeláez.

UCundinamarca News. How has the book been received by the public?

YMA: The students who have read it like it a lot, and my colleagues do too, since it has a philosophical undertone that I can't escape because of my background.

UCundinamarca News. What do I need to do to get the book?

YMA: Anyone wishing to purchase the book can do so by contacting me at [email protected]. The price is 10,000 pesos for students, faculty, and staff, and 20,000 pesos for the general public. It can also be read online at the following link: http://mitopoeticam.blogspot.com/p/libros.html

And so we say goodbye to this poet and teacher, who reminds us that she teaches ethics, philosophy and sociology of education… so that we don't forget what her book “tastes” like.

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