Santiago LONDOÑO MONTOYA
Poet
Santiago received a creative grant in partnership with the Atelier des Artistes en Exil.
What is your artistic background ?
My first creative impulse was to write. As a teenager, I already loved music and theater, and later on I started practicing both disciplines: as a student at the Conservatory of the University of Antioquia, I composed music, while doing theater with different companies in Medellín. All the while I was writing, and in 2008 I was awarded the Medellín Grant for Creation and Culture in the "young poetry" category, thanks to which I was able to publish the book La Vuelta al Día en 25 Mundos (The Tour of the Day in 25 Worlds). After traveling to Argentina and Europe, the House of Poetry of Amay in Belgium granted me its author’s residency, in 2018, to write a new collection of poems entitled El Escarlata de las Amapolas (The Scarlet of the Poppy), a collection of poetic portraits about the victims of violence in Colombia. That same year I was invited to the Maelström Festival in Brussels. Since 2020, I have been a member of the Atelier des Artistes en Exil, an association with which I also help publish a journal called Without.
How do you view your profession today ?
If by profession you mean a way to make a living through a trade, that has not been the case for me. I have always had other money jobs that have nothing to do with writing. I read and wrote when I could. Besides, I don't want to consider poetry as a profession; I believe, on the contrary, that it is the anti-profession par excellence, one of the noblest ways to waste time and money.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years? In 10 years ?
I have never liked answering these kinds of questions because I don't understand them. I already have too many problems maintaining my two jobs, one of which being poetry. But I can try to give an answer : in 5 or 10 years, I see myself as an old man, reading and writing, if I can and if I am allowed to.
Interview conducted in 2022
Photography credit : Julie Glassberg