The Uruguayan poet and the Mexican narrator will reflect on their life dedicated to letters at the Monterrey FIL that starts todayAre you sure you want to remove this note from your favourites?Literature has marked their long lives.One is a Uruguayan poet, and the other a Mexican narrator.Ida Vitale, almost 99 years old, and Elena Poniatowska, who celebrates her nine decades of life, will talk for the first time about what it means to Write at 90, within the framework of the 30th Monterrey International Book Fair that starts today in the capital of Nuevo Leon.Writing is a very suitable job to practice after 90, because you do it sitting in a chair in front of a desk, ”says Poniatowska, who turned 90 on May 19, amused.Also, at this age you are already back from many things and going into the unknown;towards the great mystery that is death, because no one knows what happens after it, no one has come back to tell about it, ”she says in an interview with Excelsior.The novelist and chronicler confesses that, “at this point in the match, I no longer have a fixed work method, because what I have done most in life has been writing and I always seek to innovate.The theme or the character is what tells you how to narrate it.My way of working and writing has evolved with each book, it's not a new thing”.She admits that “what is most sought after at a certain age is solitude, to be able to do what we feel is missing”.Although the journalist also clarifies immediately that “I cannot be like a hermit.I do need people, friends, and go out on the street, see things for myself.But I really enjoy being alone, with my cats and my garden, because that's how the ideas I write about are born."The author of The Night of Tlatelolco and The Polish Lover acknowledges that she still needs to write a good book, her great book.I think that over time you become more demanding with yourself, because you grow culturally.Of course you always want to know more;but that is something very difficult and complex, almost impossible”.She anticipates that she is writing a book that she has to do with her mother, Paula Amor. “Mom was a mystery to me.One never fully knows a loved one.I decided to write to him because I rememberthat my grandmother, on her deathbed, her last words were for her mother.They say that we all do the same thing, we invoke it in the last moments”.She says that title will also include everything she has experienced in Mexico and the causes she has supported, such as the 1968 student movement.Regarding the theme of the Subversion of women, one of the three axes that guides the contents of FIL Monterrey, Poniatowska emphasizes that women have always been subversive.But now it is stronger and deeper.Women no longer want to be second class, the ones behind the couple, the ones who keep quiet, the ones who sweep or prepare the food.It is not that they stop doing all that, but above all they want their voice to be heard”, she indicates.The 2013 Cervantes Prize winner adds that she is very pleased with the dialogue that she will hold with Vitale on October 12 at the fair.“Ida is a great poet.I remember that Octavio Paz felt enormous admiration for her.And she loves Mexico very much.”For her part, the Uruguayan translator, essayist and literary critic thinks that "a writer should be like a sponge, she should absorb everything," as she confessed in 2018 after knowing she was the winner of the FIL Prize for Literature in Romance Languages.We are all indebted to each other.With the beings of the world, with the house, the climate, with everything that is given to us in a country.You never get to pay everything you owe,” she said on that occasion, who lived in Mexico for 11 years, in the 1970s.And she promised that she would resume a book that was suspended when her husband, Enrique Fierro (1941-2016), died.“This volume is my gratitude to Mexico.All the names of my friends come to me in 11 years.I have no gratitude to any other country in the world.”Vitale, who will turn 99 on November 2, opens today, at 7:00 p.m., the nocturnal poetry reading that the Monterrey FIL will offer for nine days, with a different author.And Poniatowska will receive a tribute on October 13, at 7:00 p.m.*In the following link you will find the latest news*Also check our GalleriesMeet the most viral on Facebook TrendingRead the columnists of Excelsior Opinion