The Trait of Each Line, by David Berenguer Pestana.
April 23rd, at 8 pm, at the John dos Passos Cultural Center.
The Avesso Association promotes, on the 23rd of April, the public presentation of the poetry book “Os Traços de cada linha”, by David Berenguer Pestana. The young Madeiran writer, born in Ponta do Sol, has been writing poems and prose since he was 14 years old. Fruit of the poetry that feeds and makes, in February of this year, he launched his first book: "The trait of each line". A compendium and selection, in the background, of some of the (many) poems he had composed, with the edition of Poesia Impossível.
The session will take place at the John dos Passos Cultural Center, Ponta do Sol, at 8:00 pm, with free admission. The presentation will be in charge of Natália Bonito and will also have a moment to get to know both the author and his poetry. The book can be purchased on the event or online at Livraria Atlântico, in print or digital version [www.livrariaatlantico.com/poesia/os-tracos-de-cada-linha].
About the author: João David Berenguer Pestana was born on Madeira island, on April 29th, 2004. Born in Ponta do Sol, he spent his childhood and pre-adolescence there, later moving to Funchal. Since the age of five, he has shown an avid taste for the exact sciences, when he received a solar system simulator that aroused a strong curiosity in understanding the world. Among them, he is specially enchanted by mathematics and physics, areas in which he hopes to expand continuously and professionally. But by “irony and luck”, one morning, at the age of fourteen, for “no apparent reason”, he discovered poetry in a daring and unpublished trait of wanting to write, for the first time, his own thought… in verse. Gradually, poetry became ingrained in his life: in addition to writing, he also began to participate in various poetry soirees where he recited his poems, making him grow and thus making his new passion known more and more.
At the age of sixteen, and under the pandemic period of the SARS-Cov-2 virus, he participated in a contest by Chiado Editora that aimed to write poems about the situation we were all experiencing. With his poem “Dark Street and lit heart” he was able to guarantee himself among the selected ones, with this same poem in the work “Forty – Memories of a Confined Country” – this author's first major step.” – the author’s first major step.
And now, at the age of seventeen, he sees his dream of publishing his first book of poetry come true: “The trait of each line”.
Author's Note:
I believe that only through art and love is the greatness of sensations tangible. And, in the love of art, I believe that there is a favorite route of the senses. I am only passionate about the depth of everything, and it was only with poetry that I reached the core of feeling, clearly, everything that my eyes saw and my fingers touched. The beginning is enough for art. Love doesn't even quench eternity. Therefore, in loving art, I never cease or exclude myself: neither from myself nor from the world. And in this book I contemplate the marriage of both from a perspective that, although young, believes to be able to shelter any heart that reads it - sometimes through a crude transcription of thought, sometimes with the report of specific personal experiences, but not by reason of this lacking in empathy for the reader or incapable of making him reflect. In this book, verses of love, life, dream and suffering breathe – deep down, much of what, as humans, constitutes us. Here lives much of what there is and was in me: in each trait… each line.