Soledad Álvarez remembers that as a child she was a "very skinny and tiny" girl, with a very intense imagination, and that her mother, "one of those old ladies, very attentive to poetry," used to sing her poems by Ruben Darío, like the one that went: "The princess is sad . . . from the princess slips such sighs in her words from the strawberry lips. Gone from them laughter and the warm light of day," recites from memory this renowned 72-year-old Dominican poet and writer, winner of the 2022 National Literature Prize, in an exclusive interview with AL DÍA. 

For Alvarez, who just received in the XXII Casa de America Poetry Prize in Madrid for her collection of poems Después de tanto arder, there is no doubt that it was her mother who infected her with this early love for literature.

"When I was 15 years old, my first work, a short story, was published in a Dominican newspaper, and that's when it all began," she recalls. "Seeing my name in the paper was like a revelation. I decided at that moment that literature was my thing."

Fleeing the delicate political situation in Santo Domingo, Alvarez went to Havana to study Latin American Literature for five years.

"It was a very important time in my life. Looking from the outside (at your country) is one of the things that enriches us the most," she explains.

When she returned, she worked for the cultural supplement of Hoy, a Dominican newspaper. Parallel to her profession as a journalist, she began to publish poetry, an art that in the 1970s and 1980s still seemed to be dominated by men. 

In spite of everything, Alvarez never felt discrimination as a woman.

"That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It is true that great female creators have been left aside throughout history, but I always felt very loved," she assures.

The burden of being a woman

It was in this last collection of poems, conceived during the pandemic, that she first felt the weight of being a woman. Why?

"Because I had to shut myself up in my house, in Santo Domingo, with my husband, who is a little older, and I had to take care of everything. I wanted to read, write... But I was so tired that I couldn't do it. In the book I confess this suffering of femininity," she says. 

Después de tanto arder is mainly about married women, one of the recurring themes of her work, although this time it has the nuance of the condemnation of married life. 

"The word  'married woman' ('Mujer casada') has many nuances. One of them is the word ‘casa’, ('home') a woman knows how to create beauty around her. A living house. Men see it differently," she says.

Another theme Alvarez deals with in her poetry is to look at the reality of her country, the Dominican Republic, from a distant view — something she learned while in Cuba.

"However, when you get too far away, as is the case in exile, it can also be very sad," she says. "I can't imagine always living outside my country," she adds.

For the poet, who has many Dominican friends in exile, there is nothing more terrible than having to leave "your space, your sky...It must be terrible because it is to become a stranger, but at the same time it must be enriching. It must have its nuances of self-improvement, of wanting to be a better person," she says. 

In a country of emigrants like the Dominican Republic, whether political or economic, they know this pretty well.

“Of course, being an economic migrant is worse than being a political one. While the last one leaves with self-responsibility, the former one leaves in search of life, you have to be very brave for that.The bravery of those who leave their country should always be recognized. Migrants are more valuable people than those of us who stay behind. They are the great adventurers," she says. 

Home to more than 2million people of Dominican descent, Alvarez tips her hat to the United States.

“No one there renounces oneself, one's roots or cultures. Despite the stigma or rejection,they are still Mexicans, Hondurans, Dominicans..." she concludes.