The verb has to catch delirium”
Also known as the “poet of childhood”, Manoel de Barros brings a special perspective to the simple things in life.
Poetry is a “voice that makes people give birth.” This is how the poet Manoel de Barros from Mato Grosso do Sul defined literary poetry. For him, each time a poem is created, it is as if a new way of seeing the world is created along with it. Manoel spoke of childhood as a territory of freedom, and advocated the “childification” of words, that is, revolutionizing the way language is presented to us, and making it a setting for play.
Read more: “Crianceiras”: poems by Manuel de Barros for children
It is no coincidence that the writer became known as “the poet of childhoods”, especially for his trilogy “Memories invented” (2005, 2006 and 2007), books in which he presents childhood in three periods that never end, times that in fact they are just one. For the poet, “the writing of a memory would always have to be the writing of a childhood – imaginary, yes, but rooted in lived experience”, says the description of the work published by Companhia das Letras.
“The three ages of man would be three childhoods,” says the text.
1. Childhood as a way of being in the world
The writer did not focus his work on children. Some books, such as “Songs for a bird for nothing” (2003) and “Exercises of being a child” (2000) have been published (and recent reissues) with aesthetics and materiality specifically designed to accommodate the reader in training.
However, it is precisely there that the greatest meeting point of his writing with children lies. This is because his poetry preserves a genuine childhood, the one that lives in all of us, from zero to one hundred years old. Childhood is the common starting point of all his work; it is from childhood that he draws inspiration and from it that he extracts the substrate of his invented words.
“Childhood in Manoel de Barros is a way of seeing the world, it is the childhood of the gaze”, highlights one of the curators of the Ocupação Manoel de Barros exhibition, Bruna Ferreira da Silva.
Hence the social value of coming into contact with this work, so full of the details of an inaugural look at the world. The importance of redefining what surrounds us and exploring the world with the curiosity of someone who sees it for the first time is characteristic of childhood, and of the author's poetry. Manoel de Barros said, for example, that only children and poetry can make a verb “rave”, due to their innate ability to transform the meaning of things. To this end, he even created his own verb: “transver”.
“In the beginning was the verb
Only later did the delirium of the verb come.
The delirium of the verb was at the beginning, where the child says: I hear the color of the birds.
The child does not know that the verb listen does not work for color, but for sound.
So if the child changes the function of the verb, he becomes delirious.
And so.
In poetry that is the voice of a poet, that is the voice of making births –
4. A reunion with creativity
Do you know how to choose books for children?
Only later did the delirium of the verb come.
3. Genuine play
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This text has been adapted — details can be found in the full original article .