Loreto Sesma publishes a new collection of poems: 'It was not enough to want'
“Journalist, writer and music lover”. Those three words introduce the biography of Loreto Sesma on Instagram and Twitter (both accounts with more than eighty thousand followers, by the way).
She was born in Zaragoza, studied in Pamplona and in October she will be 25 years old. She has written five books, although she herself affirms that she is still worth more, which is why she is silent.
Before the age of 20, she had already published three –Shipwreck on 338, 317 kilometers and two emergency exits and Amor Revolver– and at 21, she received the City of Melilla International Poetry Prize with Raise the Duel.
Her fifth collection of poems, Wanting was not enough, only confirms what we already knew: Loreto Sesma is one of the most important voices in current Spanish poetry. She is the voice of a generation.
And we say voice, because before – long before – we could find her verses in a bookstore, her words began to be heard in Youtube, where she still today recites her poems for her more than 185,000 subscribers.
But let's leave the numbers aside. We are here to talk about lyrics. And why, sometimes, it is not enough to want. Loreto herself tells us.
MORE THAN WORDS
“Thanks for forgetting. She made me remember myself.”
From her pen come verses that, read at certain moments, can reach stir our guts more than we thought (or wanted).
Now, when it comes to defining herself, Loreto acknowledges that it is more complicated: “I try to get to know myself a little more every day and I always end up discovering new corners, new reactions, new gestures.
What she is clear about is that she is an extremely honest and direct person, who balances between contrasts and who she finds inspiration in everything she does, lives and thinks.
“I COULD STOP PUBLISHING, BUT NEVER WRITE”
Young talents and established writers have many things in common. After all, the latter are the future reflection in the mirror of the former. But there is a question that is repeated ad nauseam to everyone: did you always know that you wanted to write?
Loreto flatly affirms that she has always written and she has always wanted to; but she also thinks that she has been the person who has least believed in herself, although she wishes she hadn't.
"If they had not contacted me to publish my writings, I would never have sent them to a publisher" says the writer. And she adds: “I am clear that I could stop publishing but never writing, it is my cathartic method.”
Loreto Sesma: “journalist, writer and music lover”
IT WASN'T ENOUGH TO WANT
She was shipwrecked on the 338, traveled 317 kilometers and two emergency exits, she lived a revolver Love, she was a princess and raised the duel. But she was not enough for him.
For someone who loves letters, the end point of a text is just a stop along the way which serves to gather enough strength to face the next blank page. For this reason, Loreto Sesma returns (although she never left) with her fifth collection of poems: Wanting was not enough.
“It is a completely different version of the girl who one day was shipwrecked in the 338. These days I have been able to share with the readers their impressions of the book and they agree with me that it is a much more honest, cruder and more complex book”, Loreto comments to Traveler.es
Why did she shipwreck her in the 338? That number is her dorm room number. A number that for Loreto is synonymous with many memories: “well, actually that book contains texts that she had written some years before (and at that time she was 18). That room was the beginning of a new stage in another city, with another atmosphere, other people…”
"I think that with the beginning of a new stage there is always something that changes within you and makes you rediscover yourself" Sesma reflects.
And that something, right now, is represented by four letters "Wanting was not enough", which are followed by many more verses that also speak about why we are what we are, about the pain that we carry in our suitcase, the baggage of the wounds of love, but also about the possibility of light.
“It is a collection of poems that speaks of memory, of the memories that we all carry and that we try to leave behind because they hurt but, at the same time, we have needed to be who we are today”, she explains.
“THE MASTERY OF A GOOD WRITER IS IN MAKING YOU TRAVEL”
They say that a great writer, or rather, a good writer, is always a tormented writer. So let's take the opportunity to have a good writer in front of us to confirm it.
In order to write –and touch something deep in the reader–, how important is it to also have a knot inside yourself? “I think it's essential, or at least it seems that way to me. For me, the mastery of a good writer is to make you travel through a series of emotions that not even you know how to verbalize.
“Getting you to a place is relatively easy with a good pen and a good description, But make you feel what you didn't even know you were feeling? That's passing the game." , finishes off Loreto.
"Like the verse that was never a poem because no one had the courage to write it" Loreto writes in Km68. What would you say to all those people, especially the younger ones, who want to dedicate themselves to writing poetry or novels? "That they read a lot and that they write a lot and that, if it really is their dream, they don't stop trying."
MILLENNIAL POETRY?
“Love is that train that is not that it does not wait, but that it runs over. But it's run by someone you would have jumped onto the tracks for over and over again. That's why it doesn't happen again, because every love kills."
Much is said today about "millennial poetry", about "poems 2.0" or even about "instapoets". But do you really have to name it? Can't you have Bécquer and Loreto Sesma sharing a table and only call each other poetry?
Well of course you can. That the millennial generation reads poetry, and that poetry has come from the pens of Loreto Sesma, Irene X, Elvira Sastre or Offreds, is not something new. It's people reading poetry. And that phenomenon is neither new nor does it have any name beyond the obvious –we repeat–: people reading poetry.
“I am very against wanting to put labels on absolutely everything. In addition, normally the one who labels is because he intends to classify someone in a certain current and because he is interested in doing it that way, ”says Loreto.
“I don't think there is any 'millennial poetry,' or 'industrial poetry,' or 'Instagram poetry,' or anything like that. Nor do I think that all of us who are publishing poetry are in the same category, neither better nor worse, different”, she concludes.
And since we have opened the melon of labels and definitions... one of the most recurrent themes in current poetry: feminism. Loreto acknowledges having a very personal vision of feminism, and precisely for this reason she wanted to write La Princesa.
“Of course I support the fight for equality, that's what it's all about. That is precisely why I disapprove of turning feminism into an electoral motive, a marketing slogan and so on. I think there is a lot of nonsense, a lot of show and a lot of hypocrisy around feminism and that, precisely, devalues the struggle of so many women.
OF BOOKS, MUSIC, TRAVEL AND SOCIAL NETWORKS
"After knowing the darkest darkness, suddenly One afternoon in May in Malasaña you appeared"
To someone who has things as clear as Loreto, and whose verses, in addition to stirring up the past, inspire thousands of future horizons, we could not help but ask her about her own inspiration, what she reads, what she listens to, and her list of favorite (and pending) destinations.
“My bedside book has always been Rayuela , although some others like Nothing, The truce and The shadow of the cypress is elongated they also have a very special corner in my life”, comments the poet.
As for her favorite bands, she points out that "it depends so much on the moment... I love listening to Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Fito…”. There are also albums that would be looped, like The Last Waltz of The Band or Copperpot's journey of that Ear of Van Gogh from the year 2000. "Well, a little bit of everything."
As for social networks, Loreto tells us that none of them completely convinced him: “Sometimes I dream of getting rid of all of them and living a life completely oblivious to everything,” she reflects.
A life outside of everything that could well be spent exploring the world, because on her wish list is "Take the suitcase and leave tomorrow, at the latest, I would like to be traveling all day..." she says.
“In this sense I have been very lucky because my mother has made us travel a lot around the world, I think she makes you have a very open mind. If I had to choose a couple of memories, I would say Burma and Tanzania”, comments the Zaragozan.
And speaking of places and memories, what are Loreto's favorite corners in Zaragoza, Madrid and Pamplona? “From Zaragoza, my family. And yes, I consider them a place because they are my home, wherever they are. From Pamplona I would say that the Gaucho, blessed little glasses of potato and egg!”
With Madrid she has it more complicated, because she affirms that “I have had a great time in almost every corner”. But she finally she chooses: "Perhaps I would say the Plaza del Dos de Mayo, many beautiful things have happened to me there." And surely those beautiful things will materialize, if they haven't already, in even more beautiful lines.
"Wanting wasn't enough, now I know, and you should know too"