Creatura knows no borders. In this issue we have the pleasure of introducing you to this wonderful Venezuelan poet, who gives us her poems from the other side of the pond that connects us. She is another great internautic (if I may use the word...) discovery. And now I "present" her to all of you. From Venezuela for Creatura, the great Noris Roberts.

- My friend Noris, who do you think is the best poet in history?

As a Venezuelan, I undoubtedly point to the auspicious voice of Andrés Bello, the most powerful personality of his time. He was considered the first humanist of the Americas, the highest expression of the role that his culture has within the universal radius. 

Andrés Bello was a poet until the end of his life. In America, however, Bello's reflections were applied to the needs of the politically independent countries, which required instruments of general education, orientation and organization of the republics in the life of culture in the broadest sense.

In his life and work, Bello embodied the typical humanist, but a humanist representative of a new concept of culture; in fact, he is considered the first humanist in the Americas.

Andrés Bello's manifest humanism finds its poetic channel in the legendary "Silva a la Agricultura de la Zona Tórrida", a text that we have all read at some point in our lives. A voice that came from the heart.

He was made a member of the Royal Spanish Academy for his linguistic work.

All his research can be found in the majestic library of the British Museum, where he was a frequent visitor.

- Tell us about some writers from your country.

Eugenio Montejo, Andrés Eloy Blanco, Arturo Uslar Pietri, Romulo Gallegos, Rafael Cadenas, Ida Gramko, Yolanda Pantin, and many others. Venezuelan poetry has often responded to the winds of its time. It is romantic, cosmopolitan, epigrammatic, avant-garde, surrealist, rebellious, all sailing on their own waters of the writer's imagination.

- Is poetry the child of inspiration or of work?

I would say that poetry is more like a mother: a mother who gives you all her affective qualities, who puts you in the place that corresponds to you, so that you can begin your journey. From then on, everything depends on the process, the evolution itself, the devotion, the search, the desire... If I look back at my first verses, I see that the evolution is indeed the fruit of work, but the essence is in those first sensations that I would not have written today.

- What is your understanding of poetry? What is the aim of this art and what can it change?

If you ask anyone who writes, they will give you a different answer. That is, poetry can be anything from "a tool loaded with the future" to a hendecasyllabic corkscrew with no other pretension than aesthetics. 
In art in general, there are no goals. In poetry much less so, since it is born from purely emotional sources. I believe, and this is only a wish, that poetry should serve understanding: to stop wars, to satiate famines, to heal wounds. But as you can see, it is only a utopian wish.

- Which poets are your references and favorite authors?

For the reasons more or less explained above, I consider myself a somewhat anarchic reader. I mostly read what I can get my hands on, although sometimes I look for an author as a reference. 

- What is the best time for you to write a poem?

I don't really have a schedule for writing, everything flows spontaneously in any place at any time, which is why I always carry a notebook with me. Sometimes my verses sprout from a single phrase.

Share some poems you wrote.
Enigma

I contemplate how the night darkens the journey
under the sky and over the earth;
the disappearing footprints
speak of indulgence...

The stars wither
and in the last stretch of life 
abandons us in despair

Man is an enigma…

Barren

Barren is that languid thought between some fingers, 
barren is the sand of the desert, 
barren are the arms in which love dies,
barren is the prayer that is said and not heard
 
Barren is the absence of stars in the night
and when calm disappears 
existing only as a wisp in the tail of the wind

Barren is peace, justice, freedom,
when it is lost, and there is no path left

Interviewed by Kebran