The body is the perfect canvas. Through its movement, gestures, involuntary shivering, and scars it expresses what we’re feeling. The body is the perfect language. It encapsulates our fears, inner battles, and longing for touch. But that touch does not need to be from the skin of another but from the pages of a book, or even from the needle injecting ink. This instant of pain reminds us that discomfort can be freeing, that all the horrible moments in our life have made us into who we are.
The body is the perfect blank page to write poetry on. As we read or hear the words, we feel a tingling sensation, we hold our breaths as the verses sink into our soul.
We get tattoos so that something will stay with us until we leave this Earth or to carry a phrase that will give us the strength to continue on the path of life. The body provides thousands of possibilities, which is why Fausto Alzati, Mexican poet and tattoo artist, found a way to combine both his passions: verse and ink.
Living book, Poetry Anthology on Skin is the project that, Fausto believes, proves poetry is flesh, bone, and guts. His goal is for his words not to remain printed in a book that hardly anyone will read. He has begun tattooing stanzas of his work that will make up the collection of poems Acá también tengo cómo quererte (I also know how to love you here). This way his words will transform through movement and continuity.
This project started a few months ago, and to this day over 80 people from different professions, genders, social groups, and nationalities have joined in to become “living pages” of Fausto Alzati’s original verses. The poet is also dedicated to culture analysis, as well as being the mind behind the Verb Festival, and the author of Buda, drogas y pop (Buddha, Drugs, and Pop), Poemas perrones pa’la raza (Mind-blowing poems for y’all), and Algo tan trivial (Something So Trivial).
Alzati mentioned in an interview that “Tattoos are not just brands, intentional scars, or statements. They’re more a way of exteriorizing internal aspects, a kind of synesthesia.” Through different situations he chose to “blend the things I do: instead of printed book, let’s try a doodled book.”
Poetry has always been seen as an art which only some are able to access. But due to technology, the internet, and burgeoning platforms, writers have been able to experiment with new forms and mix several disciplines so that anyone can experience this genre. This project wishes to bond those carrying Alzati’s verses, so that poetry can travel and find new readers.
The poems are in a simple clear language so that others can connect with the words directly. These verses are not pretending, disguising, or hiding their meanings or intentions.
Sólo una cosa pido:
sobre el cadáver
siembra un árbol de mangos
para que sigan
comiendo de mí.
I ask one thing:
Above my corpse
Plant a mango tree
So they can keep
Feeding off of me.
“Tattoos are ritual experience: there’s intimacy, pain, the skin is damaged as the ink is inserted into it. When you tattoo someone, they tell you things about themselves. It’s cathartic. Pain prevents us from pretending. Communications comes after pain. Life wounds us all the time and leaves its scars. A tattoo is a deliberate action: you choose it, it’s voluntary.”
Fausto Alzati
Source: Vice Magazine
Translated by María Suárez
