SOURCE: Télam -
The actor, writer, musician and plastic artist Viggo Mortensen stressed this Thursday in Bahía Blanca that in Argentina "people write, publish and luckily also buy poetry", during a meeting he held at the Centro Cultural de la Cooperativa Obrera with the writer Fabián Casas and the editor Gustavo López, where he presented his new book of poems "Ramas para un nido" (Branches for a nest).
The presentation of the independent label LUX was held to a full house (160 seats, free of charge, sold out in less than an hour). "It is an honor to be in Bahía Blanca, a very special cradle for poetry in this country where I am publishing a book of mine for the first time," said Mortensen (New York, October 20, 1958), the iconic Aragorn from Peter Jackson's film trilogy, 'The Lord of the Rings."
During the presentation, the writer, who is also a musician and plastic artist, read a selection of his own poems, such as "El pelo de María", "La cuesta", written 14 years ago, "Luego", "El descanso", "La lapicera de Pavese", "Las alas del lobo", "Te doy" and "Respuesta".
About the book "Ramas para un nido", Mortensen told that it is composed of two parts, one entitled "Lo que no se puede escribir", published five years ago, which Gustavo López had liked very much; and another one with "poems from different periods", some of them "new", written "during the initial confinement of the pandemic, in 2020 and 2021".
"I guess they caught that oppressive air that we all breathed with care, with fear," said the actor of legendary and endearing films such as "Eastern Promises" or "Captain Fantastic" and "Green book", noting that those poems "have a very conditioned and limited point of view".
What happened with the pandemic," he reflected, "is that it forced us to think all the time about the possibility that life could end at any moment for any person; that thing of risk, that there is no promise that has to be fulfilled, that you are here and you have to find out why, if you want to, and that's it. Until you're not here, and normally we don't think about that," he added.
In a convoluted Spanish, Mortensen reflected on reading and writing", told of his pleasure in "sharing with friends" what he writes, and said that the interpretation of a poem is "like a movie you see".
Casas commented in turn that, when traveling by plane to Bahía Blanca, Viggo began to write in a notebook, "so that the time would pass without talking", a situation for which "we both wrote to each other".
At the end of the talk, Mortensen went to the balcony of the Centro Cultural de la Cooperativa Obrera where he greeted some 300 fans who were waiting outside but could not get in due to lack of space and, before leaving, he signed his books before several of those present.
After his visit to Bahía Blanca, the actor will travel to the city of Buenos Aires, where he will present the book on Sunday at 6 p.m. at the Kirchner Cultural Center (CCK), while at the same time, but on Monday, he will read aloud some of his writings at the Borges Cultural Center in Buenos Aires.