INNER VIEW WITH POET MATEO MORRISON
January 5, 2020, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
On an early, sunny, and warm morning, I made my way to Mateo Morrison’s home office where we had coffee and talked poetry, history, and about sadness and sweetness into the afternoon before I caught my flight back to New York City.
Mateo Morrison (b. 1947) is an award-winning, world-renowned Dominican post-war generational poet with over 30 literary works across all genres and translated in various languages whose son is a 2020 Presidential Candidate of the Dominican Republic.
Amanda Saviñón: How does it feel to be you today?
Mateo Morrison: I feel good, I’ve been writing and doing this a very long while.
AS: Where is your family from?
MM: I am one of 4 children and our father Egbert Morrison was Jamaican and our mother Efigenia Fortunato was Dominican. I also have 6 sons.
AS: Are you the only poet in the family?
MM: Well everyone is a poet but I am the only one that has published Poetry and when my family noticed how good I was at it, they all left it to me.
Currently, Morrison is the Honorary President of the Orlando International Book Fair and has been commemorated at the International Book Fairs of Puerto Rico as well as Lawrence, Massachusetts, and represented the Dominican Republic at the International Meeting of Poets of the Latin World in Romania.
AS: You are a poet but you are also a lawyer. What came first?
MM: Poetry came first. I studied at the Latin American and Caribbean Center for Cultural Development, majoring in Cultural Management. I got my Masters in ‘Global World Philosophy’ from the University of the Basque County in Spain. I then graduated Magna Cum Laude in Law with a degree in Copyright and Intellectual Property and another in International Legal Business, as well.
AS: How do you find yourself marrying Law and Poetry?
MM: Well, first I put each thing in its place and then I hope that they respect one another even though I’ve put my cultural and literary interests before the law, Jajaja.
Morrison has been a high school and college professor and is currently part of the jury team of the Cultural and Creative Industries Masters of the Arts faculty at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD). At this University he was also the chair of Legislation and Cultural Rights.
He received the award Salomé Ureña de Henríquez, granted by the Secretary of State for Education. Morrison is the founding president of Foundacion Espacios Culturales and founder of the Union of Dominican Writers, where he served as the Secretary-General.
Mateo Morrison headed the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo's Department of Culture for 22 years where he coordinated important national and international events, such as the Pablo Neruda International Meeting of Writers, the Thursday of Culture, Cultural Sundays, the First National Congress of Popular Cultural Groups and two meetings of original folk groups.
AS: I remember hearing somewhere that Pablo Neruda is one of your muses and inspiration. Who are some of the others?
MM: Yes, Pablo Neruda, Miguel Hernandez, Cesar Vallejo, Octavio Paz, Vicente Wipro, Jorge Luis Borges, Fernando Pessoa, Walt Whitman, who by the way turns 200 this year, Ezra Pound, T.S Elliot, Allen Tate, Archibald MacLeish. I can keep going...
AS: You just mentioned Walt Whitman is turning 200 years old this year. How do you think Poetry has stayed alive all this time or how will it continue to stay alive?
MM: Poetry was born with the people as oral literature and because of that there are as many poems as there are people. Perhaps not written but there certainly are. There was a time when we didn’t know writing as we do now. The people invented that. When humanity first started we needed to learn to survive and to communicate. We did that orally and with signs and signals. Back in the day, if a man in a cave said: “You’re beautiful, you have beautiful eyes” that was poetry and who was going to say it wasn’t? Poetry has always been alive and will always be.
As if the accomplishments we mentioned weren’t enough, Mateo created and directed the UASD magazine Extension and founded the Literary Workshop César Vallejo, a fundamental poetry institution in the emergence of 80’s generation.
On July 5, 2000, Mateo Morrison delivered the keynote address in the Promulgation of Law 41-00, an act held before the cultural community in the National Palace, headed by the President of the Dominican Republic at the time, Dr. Leonel Fernández Reyna.
AS: One of your sons, Milton Morrison, is currently running for President of the Dominican Republic. In an old interview in New York City, he mentioned that you instructed your children at a very young age to not become poets because one will never find a newspaper listing that reads "POETS NEEDED".
MM: JAJAJAJJAJAJAJ. That is correct. When he was younger he then told me he’d study poetry but “later on.” He went on to study electrical engineering and told me he’d be going into politics. I asked him if he was sure of entering the world of politics and he couldn’t be surer of it. Now he is a Presidential candidate.
Milton Teófilo Morrison, 2020 Presidential Candidate of the Dominican Republic. Courtesy of Milton Morrison.
At the 2008 New York International Book Fair, he was recognized by the Minister of Culture and the Cultural Commissioner for the United States for his contributions to culture. The Association of Writers and Journalists awarded him the Caonabo de Oro award for his contributions to literature.
AS: What is next for you? I remember you mentioned you’re writing a memoir. When is that slated to be published?
MM: The memoir is in its editing stages. I have so many projects in my head that have formed over the last 4 years. I just released a novel for young adults called Un Silencio Que Camina (a silence that walks) to be distributed particularly to high school students. We just printed 30,000 copies.
AS: Speaking of silence, in an old poem you wrote:
*Translated from Spanish to English*
I pass like a sleepwalker through the very streets
That she must have passed through
I create silhouettes in the sands
In which, perhaps, she placed her feet
Original:
Recorro sonámbulo los caminos
Donde debió pasar
Hago siluetas en las arenas
En que quizás depositó sus pies
AS: Your work reminds me of black and white romantic silent films. The words create so much space not only around the stories you are telling but also mental space for the readers. I find it interesting that while there is a lot of silence, the mood is not a sad one but instead an intimate and nostalgic one. What is your work inspired by? Muses?…Memories?…
MM: Great question. My friend Cesar Vallejo’s famous book published in 1918 is called Trilce. Until this day no one knows what the word means because he made it up. Trilce is the combination of 'triste' (which means sad in Spanish) and 'dulce' (which means sweet in Spanish). Trilce. Poetry is a mixture of sadness and sweetness and life isn’t any different as life too is both sad and sweet. My work is inspired by the sadness and sweetness of life.
The Academy of Sciences of the Dominican Republic Morrison an honorary member of this entity. He was awarded the Pluma de Oro award in the Madrid Book Fair for his contributions part in the dissemination of Dominican culture in Spain.
On May 30, 2009, Morrison received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa in Humanities by the International Writers and Artists Association in Ohio. About a year later, in February 2010, he received the National Prize for Literature, the highest distinction granted to living Dominican writers.
After our interview concluded, Mateo asked me what my day-to-day life is like in NYC and what I do for my career. He gave me his own interview as I photographed him in his living room with his awards and books not long before I caught my flight back to JFK.
photographed by amanda saviñón and carlos saviñón
translated by sharaah aquino