Book "I HAVE DREAMED OF YOU SO MUCH FREEDOM" by Beatriz Iriart, poems dedicated to the victims of the Shoá (bilingual edition English- Spanish), on Amazon

 

WANTING

        To the survivors of the Holocaust

I have dreamed of you so much
in these days
of stew and bread.
I have dreamed of you so much
with the frost and the famine
with the chains lacerating the ankles
with the terror
installed in the hut.
I have dreamed of you so much
FREEDOM.


“Dear Beatriz, your texts are very touching and truly poetic about a subject which is not easy to write about. And it is not only a Jewish pain but also a human tragedy.” Eliahu Toker, argentine poet, Buenos Aires, 2001.

"Your poetic work, your examination of these ghostly mistakes of humanity, commits us to be alert to the personal and collective processes through which we wander clumsily”. Dr. Susana D. Castillo, american professor and researcher, San Diego State University, California, 2009.

Beatriz Iriart is an Argentine poet. She is a member of the Society of Latin American Writers of California and International Chapter on the Internet (SELC and CII) in the United States.
In 2015 Venezuelan composer Diana Arismendi wrote her work “In memoriam”, to commemorate the Holocaust, and the second movement was inspired in I was in Auschwitz… The concert was organized by Espacio Anna Frank from Caracas with the participation of Venezuela’s Symphony Orchestra directed by master Alfredo Rugeles.
From 2015 to 2025, her poems dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust have been read on radio programs, at commemorative events, and published in magazines in Europe and America.
In 2023 in Spain, the Amlega Association read their poem “Numbers” during the Pink Holocaust events at various universities across the country.

I have dreamed of you so much FREEDOM de Beatriz Iriart, cover by Claudia Patricia Lopez Osornio and graphic design  by Jairo Carthy,  in  AMAZON:

                                         I have dreamed of you so much FREEDOM 

JOSÉ PULIDO in the book INTERVIEWS (2025) by Viviana Marcela Iriart “I'm like a castaway clinging to his tongue”

 

José Pulido. Photo: Vasco Szinetar

José Pulido was part of one of the most beautiful and beloved traditions in Caracas: Sunday, buying the papers, having breakfast at the bakery, going up the Ávila, enjoying the blue butterflies and the singing of Quebrada Quintero, spreading the papers among the stones and then… José Pulido and his interview completed the happiness of the day. It did not matter who he interviewed, because the real pleasure was reading him. And my friends would go: what does Pulido say? Have you read what Pulido said? Pulido is so wonderful! Pulido was the main character. Then came the person being interviewed. Because reading José Pulido is good for you. It gives you joy. It makes you think. Because José Pulido writes with humor, tenderness, compassion, intelligence, love. José Pulido the poet, the writer, the journalist. The interviewer who created a new style. The kind, simple and tender man who creates bridges for people to meet, to cross, to discover the other side of their side.

 

José Pulido, who does not deserve to be exiled like he is today, walking around Genoa while he goes around Caracas.

 

And José Pulido is also Carlos Giménez, who he and I love so much, and that beautiful article he wrote: Carlitos sin olvido (Carlitos without oblivion). And he is that marvelous interview he just made to another wonderful and beloved figure from Caracas: Rolando Peña.  An interview that is like a story written with four hands.  An interview that is like a love letter.

 

And José Pulido is this poem of his, which I find while I'm writing this and then I'm out of words.

 

 

THE OLD SONG

 

Before antiquity arrived

the birds that died

turned into carnelian and tourmaline

John claimed in the Book of Revelation that the face of god was made of jasper and carnelian

birds probably made one of their best graveyards in that face

 

All mountains have been built out of birds' ancestors

 

From a yellow, blue and green bird

who dies when put in a cage and sings in beautiful fury

the mountain of Caracas was born creating ripples of water and branches

 

the Ávila of stones and roots, spit with Pleiades

is our most concrete mountain

 

I wish I could sweep its pathways with a broom of dreams

clean them up of all miseries

 

It is so big it could only fit into the universe once

when the heavens dilated

so that mangos could bloom

 

hummingbirds in the Ávila seem as if they were invented by Borges:

they fly backwards because they care more about the beginning than the end

 

the Ávila is huge but it is not so hard to carry in a bag

it is completely portable when carried as a feeling

especially if you have looked at its mermaid-like curves,

its crests resembling a resting animal

Or if you have ever heard the waters talk in Quebrada Quintero

about how to go down to the Caribbean Sea without having to ask for

directions in the valley

 

In the afternoon the mountain opens its eye made of sun

An eye that falls asleep on the voracious head of dry trees

at night it crouches with its breath of burning plants

ready to jump again on the fearful valley with its rabbit heart

this is the mountain that feeds on looks

that on the beach side is the Ávila of Reverón

deranged by light

and on the Caracas side is the Ávila of Cabré

borrowing the iridescence of the sparkling hummingbird

and all Pleiades sneeze with love when molasses grass stirs,

the delicious herb

and at the top and the bottom it is the Ávila of everyone and no one

a mountain that is like the Virgin of Coromoto and the Virgin of the Valley

like La Chinita and the Divina Pastora

because you do not have to know its pathways

to believe it represents our customs

 

The mountain was a bedroom for clouds a million years ago

and it still is.

The mountain was there making guacharacas

before anyone even thought of building the wall

that we would call town;

this ancient air is what comforts me.

The Ávila is a bird with apple mint in its wings,

it is the pain of fires kept within a case made of roots.

The Ávila is like saying amen when you pray for Caracas.

 

 

 

José Pulido, Salamanca, España.

 

 Carlos Giménez, Barbarito Diez, María Teresa Castillo,
Pablo Milanés,Miguel Henrique Otero, José Pulido...
"Macondo", María Teresas`s house

José, how has coronavirus treated you? What did you do during the quarantine?

 

I don't think coronavirus has treated anyone well. Fortunately I haven't got it because I'm always shut in writing and I only go out to walk up to the nearest mountain. I visit populated areas when I have to read poetry somewhere.

 

What was the first thing you did when the quarantine was lifted?

 

For me, it hasn't been lifted. I go out to walk but I wear a mask. Here you are fined if you don't wear it in the street. I haven't had any plans for when we get to the end of this. Beer tastes as good at home as it does in the bar.

 

Are you writing anything? What?

 

Poetry. I do some interviews for amusement. Poetry is my constant passion.

 

What are your plans for the mid-term?

 

Not dying yet to see what things have changed.

 

(...)

Excerpt from the book INTERVIEWS by Viviana Marcela Iriart, graphic design by Jairo Carthy, sold on Amazon

On sale on AMAZON

CARLOS GIMÉNEZ, founder of the Caracas International Theater Festival, in the book INTERVIEWS (2025) by Viviana Marcela Iriart: “Our country is the empire of consummated facts, of de facto culture” /

 

Carlos Giménez (born in Córdoba, Argentina, on April 13, 1946, Aries) is the founder and director of the Caracas International Theater Festival, together with María Teresa Castillo, one of the major drivers of culture in Venezuela, who has not hesitated to support him since 1971, when the first festival was held, and who then hired him as Art Director for the Caracas Athenaeum, an institution she has helped create and of which she is the president. Carlos is also the founder and director of the Rajatabla Group, with which he has traveled around the world, winning hundreds of awards, and which put Venezuelan theater at the center of the global theatrical stage.

 

Working as a director since he was a teen, in 1965 he participated in the First Nancy Theater Festival with his group El Juglar. He was 19 years old and he achieved something impossible at the time: without any previous performances in Buenos Aires, he gained international exposure directly from Córdoba to Europe. After that, they traveled to Poland, where the group shared the Honorable Mention with East Germany in Warsaw and received the First Prize in Krakow. Back in Argentina he faced the indifference of the capital's theatrical world towards his achievements in Europe. In response, Carlos created in Córdoba the First National Theater Festival, but was excluded from its organization in 1967, when political repression was starting in his country. This event decided him to abandon his home country.

 

This interview took place in the context of the Pirandello Festival, which is held in every auditorium and every space within the Caracas Athenaeum, and which he is in charge of organizing. According to Carlos Giménez, the “main idea for organizing the Festival comes from the need to connect theater as a social event within the community it is inserted in”—in this case, the significant Italian immigrant population—, to involve private business in cultural activities, to take culture to all social classes, all aspects in which Venezuelan theater has stayed a bit on the sidelines. With this purpose, the Caracas Athenaeum plans to organize annual festivals about other important figures in world theater. 

 

If you had to create a minimal autobiography, what aspects of your life would you choose?

 

My arrival to Venezuela in November 1969. Because this defines a lot, not only professional aspects in my life, but also personal aspects, that is, what I was going to do with my life and my career.

Then, as this event divided my life in two, going back to my experiences in Argentina, one of the most important moments was my high school graduation in 1964 and my departure to Europe. There I discovered a world that was completely unknown to me and I was dazzled by it, which meant, at least for me, that I was not going to stay locked within the parameters set by the city or the country I was born in. I realized there was a mismatch between what I wanted and what my environment, my habitat, gave me.

During that time, I met Jack Lang, who is the director of the World Theater Festival in Nancy, and now Minister of Culture in France, so that was how in 1964 I came into contact with international festivals, which was going to be really important, because Jack Lang invited us to participate in 1965 in the First World Festival in Nancy. This invitation also extended to the group of people who at that time were in Europe without having constituted the El Juglar group yet - the creation of which is another important moment in my life, even though El Juglar never had neither the influence nor the impact that Rajatabla has had in Latin America. This participation was extremely important if we consider that this group that went to the Nancy World Festival and to festivals in Warsaw and Krakow, Poland, in 1965, was a provincial theatrical group that had not left Córdoba to go to Buenos Aires, but to participate in these really important events.

Moreover, 1965 was the year when all the movements which would have a huge impact in the theatrical world started all at the same time, like Nancy, Grotowski, Eugenio Barba, Jack Lang, Els Joglars from Barcelona and La Comuna from Portugal. In Poland, we presented a play which won one of the awards of the International Theatre Institute (ITI-UNESCO), called “El Otro Judas” (The Other Judas) from Abelardo Castillo, one of the most eminent Argentine intellectuals from that time and director of “El Escarabajo de Oro”. With this play that I directed we won the Honorable Mention together with East Germany in Warsaw and, in Krakow, we received the First Prize.

 

How important was your success in Europe for your career?

 

It was crucial. That moment and then the cold reception we had in Argentina when we presented the same play decided me to leave my country.

 

And did you come directly to Venezuela?

 

No, I started in 1968 with what would be another fundamental event in my life: a tour by land from Córdoba to Caracas, which took us 3 months. We went to the main mining centers in Bolivia, where we presented our shows. I vividly remember the experience we had in Chorolque, a peak that is 5,000 meters above sea level and has the highest tin mine in the world. There, since there was no electricity, we performed using the miners' lights - that is, surrounded by 40 miners who provided us light with their helmets while we performed a children's play. This tour meant a terrifying discovery of Latin America, not just skin-deep. We came into contact with utter poverty in Latin America. We also performed in fishing centers in Peru, we did a wonderful tour around Peru, we performed in Colombia and in 1968 we arrived at the Manizales Festival. In this festival, we presented a play called “La Querida Familia” (The Dear Family), a baroque anthology by Ionesco, and the jury formed by Ernesto Sábato, Pablo Neruda, Jack Lang, Miguel Ángel Asturias, awarded us the prize. However, we still couldn't get to Venezuela - we only managed to do that after participating in the Second Manizales Theater Festival in 1969, where we met Omar Arrieche, Director of the Barquisimeto Educational Experimental Theater, who got us a visa to enter by land.

(...)

Excerpt from the book INTERVIEWS

Caracas, Intermedio Magazine, May 1984

INTERVIEWS, with graphic design by Jairo Carthy, is available on  AMAZON in paperback and ebook versions.

 

Book "SI...IF" by Claudia Patricia López Osornio, contemporary latin american art, graphic design by Jairo Carthy, for sale on Amazon

 

 

Venezuelan theater director and art collector Rodolfo Molina says in the prologue to this book: “There is an undercurrent of liquid sensations in the distance that overwhelms the vision… In those blurred images, there is also everything you want to see.”

And Argentine poet and art collector Beatriz Iriart opines: “…works in which we perceive glimpses and shadows of a recent past and a dreamlike present. We are grateful for her legacy, which allows us to jump two Hopscotch lines and reach Heaven.”

Claudia Patricia Lopez Osornio studied set design at the La Plata Theater School and painting with artists Mirta Rosetti and Cristina Manganiello. She has held solo and group exhibitions in Argentina, Canada, and Venezuela, where she also taught puppet lighting workshops in Caracas and other parts of the country, invited by the prestigious puppeteer Eduardo Di Mauro.

Claudia Patricia Lopez Osornio is a member of Friends of Macla (Museum of Contemporary Latin American Art of La Plata), where the book will soon be christened and available for sale.

The design for "SI...IF" is by artist and graphic designer Jairo Carthy and is a further work of art that visually enriches the artist's work. It is the union of two great talents that results in a collector's book. 

For sale on Amazon.