Word Power

Carlos Reyes-Manzo is worried about the future. Thirty-two years after his arrest and torture by the Pinochet regime in Chile as a result of his membership of the Socialist party, he continues to see dark forces at work all over the world.

"We are at a dramatic time in our history," he says. "Our democracy is being taken away, and we’re not reacting. People are stuck in their own corners and wondering what to do next." Big business, politics, religion - there is danger on every side. "Today, we are still in time to save the planet, but tomorrow it will be too late," he says. "And that’s why it’s important to raise these issues. Poetry is one of the more direct languages in which we can put them, and to which people will listen."

After working for 40 years as a documentary photographer in some of the poorest and most troubled regions of the world, Reyes-Manzo last month published his first collection of poems, Oranges in Times of Moon, with the Andes Press Agency. A dual-language edition, presenting the Spanish originals alongside Valeria Baker’s English translations, it traces his journey from a torture cell in the Chilean prison camp of Tres Alamos to escape to England, and a life in exile in Beirut, Afghanistan, Iraq and South Africa. The collection charts the key events of a painful 30-year voyage: the murder of a Chilean priest ("Juan Alsina"); the loneliness of exile ("Un árbol"); a nightmare of dogs and black hoods ("Abu Ghraib"); the hardship of a migrant worker ("Los afuerinos").

"Globalization is affecting all of us, whether we like it or not," Reyes-Manzo concludes. "Even here in England we are affected, directly or indirectly." A photojournalist by trade, he sees poetry as a way of communicating the reality behind the pictures he takes, of letting those without power speak. He wants "to make a noise. I know that poetry doesn’t have any more power than that. And after that, let’s see if people will react."

The word "olvidados" - the forgotten - tolls through the collection like a bell. It is a word that is "very important" to him, "because the big majority of people who live at this moment in history are the olvidados. We don’t think about them."

It seems to him that poets have a duty to engage with these problems. "It’s a political act, writing a poem," he says. "There is not one poet who doesn’t express a political opinion. Even the ones who write about the flowers of Kew Gardens, still they are clearly expressing opinions about society."

Reyes-Manzo describes his poetry as being rooted in the extraordinary experiences of his life, in particular the two years he spent in detention. "Of course you cannot forget the torture," he says. "You will never forget. It will always be there in my body, my heart." A prisoner, he explains, feels a mix of loneliness and a sense of solidarity with those fighting for his release. "When you have experiences where you cannot distinguish between life and death, obviously it’s going to transform you forever," he concludes. "I cannot be the same person as I used to be before I was detained." This personal experience has also transformed how he sees the suffering of others. "A few times I’ve been very close to death," he explains. "When you see the same things happening to other people, when I visit places where people are dying, such as Iraq, you recognize that your own experience has marked you."

For a long time after his arrest he found it difficult to write. "You are more careful in what you write and what you say," he says. "I knew I had a story to tell, but it took me a long time to write it down; I had to begin by writing the most simple things. The most difficult thing, however, was that nobody wanted to hear this story. People would look at me, smile and walk away. That affected me more than what happened in prison. That is what affects your capacity to write."

After some time he started writing "intensely", but it was only when General Pinochet was arrested in London that he felt free to express himself. "I regained my voice. I felt able to speak out, to be the person I want to be again, the person I was."

He used to write in a blue notebook with a blue pen, a kind of "magic formula", but now he begins with a few lines in any notebook that is to hand. "When I went to prison in Chile I lost most of my work. You come to understand that material things don’t matter at all."

Some poems have been lost forever. "You remember the lines you wrote, and how you wrote them," he says, "but you’ve lost the feeling."

It is this "feeling" of a poem that is the starting point, the crux for Reyes-Manzo. "I work by feelings," he says. "I try not to intellectualize. I think when you start intellectualizing you lose your humanity."

There are a few poems in the collection which experiment with the form of the text on the page ("Navidad en Peixinhos", for example, which seeks to capture the swing of ringing bells by placing stanzas at either side of the page), but mostly he tries to write "as freely as possible".

"Otherwise you’re compromising," he says, "you’re more interested in the form and the meter than the truth of the feeling."

His direct style and keen observation give many of the poems in Oranges in Times of Moon a very English feel, even in Spanish. "I have lived much more as an adult in England than in Chile," he explains, adding that he has begun to write in English. "Spanish is much more ‘florido’," he waves his hands. "The English language is much more to the point, much more concise. I like to see things simply, straightforward. I don’t like playing around with empty words, I like it straightforward. English poetry is like that. There is something concrete about it."

For the present, though, there are Valeria Baker’s translations. "I still dream in Spanish," he says, "so it will take me a long time to write in English. But it will come."