Interview + raffle with Maria Sanchez

N.: You define yourself as a “field veterinarian who writes.” What was the trigger that led you to publish the collection of poems 'Cuaderno de campo' ?

MS: Yes, because I think it is important to talk about how books are written. From what spaces, privileges, classes, genders, places, professions… In Tierra de mujeres I said that I always wrote tired, because of my profession, which is what pays my bills and feeds me, my job as a veterinarian. Then there is the rest that happens on a day-to-day basis: care, housework, everything that comes with a house and writing. Cuaderno de campo , my first book, is a collection of poems that took seven years to finish. The poems followed one another as the book itself asked me to. One day an image would appear and it could take months to capture it in a poem. I really enjoyed writing it. For me, Cuaderno de campo is a letter of introduction, perhaps that is why it took so long to write it. It is a way of thanking and at the same time, of saying goodbye to my origins, a tribute to my roots. I was always clear that I did not want to feel ashamed of that first book. I wanted to go back and not change anything, to feel confident about that first book that paved the way.

N.: Was it difficult to find a publisher that would publish a book that equally reflects the harshness and beauty of the countryside?
MS: No, because the truth is that I was lucky. I met my editor, Elena Medel, thanks to my high school language teacher, who showed up at the La Bella Varsovia booth telling her that she had a student who was writing and that she had to read it. Elena knew how to wait for the book, accompany me in the process, in the ideas, in the images, in the corrections. She knew how to invest in it and pamper it in a time when the countryside and rural things were not in fashion in current poetry. It is amazing to see how a book grows thanks to the work of an editor, and in that sense, I am infinitely grateful to her.

N.: You say that if you didn't work among trees and animals you wouldn't write, and in 'Tierra de Mujeres' you describe what your daily life is like, combining your daily work as a veterinarian with writing. What motivates you to keep going?
MS: Yes, in Tierra de mujeres I talk about the countryside as “my invisible narrative.” I stole that phrase from one of my favorite writers, the Portuguese Maria Gabriela Llansol. She said that she spent many hours working in the garden, not writing, but taking care of it. And that that was her invisible narrative. For me, the best things I have written, the ones I am most proud of, have come to me while driving to work, or in the countryside. For me, the countryside is my invisible narrative, because it is where everything comes from. I couldn’t tell you what motivates me, because it is something that my body asks for. Perhaps with Tierra de mujeres there was a certain urgency, because I wanted to break with that flat and simple postcard that many media outlets gave me about the countryside and that had nothing to do with my day to day life. That not feeling recognized pushed me a lot to write and to try to serve as a loudspeaker and space for new narratives about our rural environments.

N.: When and why did you decide to focus on rural women?
MS: The theme has always been there. In Cuaderno de campo , the germ is appreciated. The poem that opens the book marks the separation of work based on gender, it also talks about that caring hand that appears later in Tierra de mujeres . Before the book, I wrote several articles about it and began to do genealogy within my own family. The best gift that Cuaderno de campo gave me was that my family, seeing the reception that the book had and realizing what moved me to write, began to tell me stories from home, from the women in my family. For example, the story of my great-great-grandmother Pepa with the cork oak was told to me by my father after Cuaderno de campo . I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I hadn't written. Would they have ended up telling me the stories anyway? How many of them have I not gotten to in time and will I never know about? Here, too, I was extremely lucky with my editor, Jesús Rocamora, and my agent, Maria Cardona. They helped me a lot to shape the book and accompanied me in the writing process. Tierra de mujeres is also a kind of duel with the women in my house. With the arrival of feminism we were looking for references, hidden stories, invisible women, but we ignored our grandmothers, our mothers, our aunts. I needed to make up for having arrived late, for not having understood as a teenager their circumstances, the places they came from, the backpacks they carried on their backs. I needed to claim and make my own genealogy.

N.: Your latest book , 'Almáciga', is a nursery of words. What inspired you to collect them?
MS: Almáciga began to bustle a year before Tierra de Mujeres came out, where I already talked about the project. I began to explore the idea of ​​collecting words. I had a certain fixation and obsession with the subject because, suddenly, I realized that there were certain words used by the people of my town, my grandmothers, my parents, the ranchers or the shepherds, that I didn't know what they were, that I had heard them, but I hadn't noticed them. And then I began to ask, and new words began to appear in my ears. Words not only with accents and languages ​​different from mine, but with stories and brutal lives linked to them. I was always clear that I didn't want to make another dictionary of towns and regions, because there are many. I wanted to select the words that I like the most and that were alive in a text, in a context, relating to each other. The seedbed is the place where vegetables are sown and raised before being transplanted, as defined by the RAE, that place in the garden that is chosen so that the seeds germinate, sprout and gain strength before being transplanted. I liked the image of the seedbed so much that I wanted to do the same with words. Give them shelter in a space where they can recover and grow again to re-enter our conversations and our daily lives. The project continues collaboratively on the website, www.almáciga.es

N.: Finally, could you recommend a book to learn about the countryside and change our idyllic vision of it?
MS: Well, many come to mind, but I think that John Berger's Trilogy of Fatigues is an essential book for me and one that is very present in my work.

On a brief visit to Barcelona, ​​María left us a dedicated copy of Tierra de Mujeres (published by Seix Barral ). Do you want it? Take part in our Instagram giveaway and get your hands on this bestseller that sells out one edition after another in bookstores.