Highlighted... A no man's land (with people inside).

What language does poetry speak?

Abstract

I start with two ideas. The first: even if it is communication, the first gesture of art (in this case, poetry) is with itself. Interaction (which includes the idea of ​​"intention", because directed at the other) comes later. But the first gesture is always a leap into the void. That's why it seems to me that great poems are written "in error", while always maintaining a relationship with reality. Poetry is always written in a foreign language, as Maria Irene Ramalho has said more than once.
The second idea I bring here is related to the fingerprint image. The fingerprint is what best defines us as human beings, as absolutely unique individuals; no two fingerprints are alike. But the fingerprint defines our identity only from a biological point of view. I'm Portuguese, I'm not English, nor German, nor French. But I am, within my individuality, European. I feel European. Because identity is also identification and identification is built by the presence of memories. Our European cultural past is common and, obviously having to do with a wide variety of elements, it does not pass through a common language, but, and in the case of so-called Western Europe, through an understanding of citizenship that in some way invests us with similar gestures.