Pedro Gil Flores, the author stigmatized as a ‘cursed poet’ who did not seek to be a legend; I just wanted to be a writer

From the age of 18, the age at which he published Stop the war that I don’t play (1989), the maintenance Pedro Gil Flores (1971-2021) found in poetry -especially- an escape route, a home made of letters, his way of expressing everything he kept in his being, his true addiction. The poet has left the earthly space, but his writings have remained to continue finding him between verse and verse or between each narration.

Pedro Gil, narrator

“The poems that he has written throughout his life are chapters of his own life, but deepened, filtered by reflection, irony, incessant reading and mockery of balance (…). In them appear the voices of criminals, drug addicts, children, parents and lovers who failed, readers, drinkers, friends and neighbors, each one with their wound and their dagger held high”. wrote Fernando Iturburu on the back cover of 17 stabs is nothing (2009).

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“All my poetry is autobiographical and drugs are part of my blood, my experiences, my encounters and disagreements”, Gil himself affirmed in dialogue with this newspaper. The author more than once defined himself as marginal, “because when I came into the world, marginality was what touched me.”

Delirium Tremens (1993), With some wrinkles on the forehead (1997), I have led a happy life (2001), Hard poets don’t cry (2001), 17 stabs is nothing (2009), Chronic (poems from the Sacred Heart psychiatric hospital, 2012), the prince of scoundrels (2014) are some of his published works, many of them are testimony of his experiences.

Last Wednesday, January 26, Gil’s lifeless body was recognized. According to information shared in the media, he was run over by a truck transporting bananas on 113 avenue in Manta, on Friday, January 21. Yes, five days passed until someone arrived at the morgue and said ‘it is the poet Pedro Gil’. In life he had confessed his fear of agony, he preferred a quick and painless death; but it seems that fate surprised him with something different.

And it is that in addition to standing out for his extensive work, of which everyone now speaks with sublime beauty and admirable respect, the poet spent his years under the stigma of ‘accursed writer’. One of his latest works is named after the number of stab wounds he received on March 1, 2008, in an abandoned house in Manta.

“Yes, the stigma of a cursed writer weighs me down: women who abandoned me, friends who stabbed me in the back. Sometimes, having a reputation as a thief, I, Pedro Gil, have been robbed, stabbed, shot, beaten”, expressed to George Hammer in 2010, in an interview for this newspaper.

“I’m not cursed or anything like that, if that were the case I would have already killed my enemies”, he added in another interview.

Pedro Gil: Yes, the stigma of being a cursed writer weighs me down

In addition to being a writer, he worked for a time as an experiential therapist, a profession in which he combined cinema with Narcotics Anonymous and the Bible. “I learned happiness in the midst of unhappy people. I loved and I love God. I discovered that I lacked or lack loving myself”He told this newspaper. He was also a workshop facilitator for the writer Miguel Donoso Couple and professor at the University of Manta.

Among the things he said in the middle of his particular dialogues, he expressed that he wanted the following sentence for his epitaph: ‘It’s sad to die’. He also said another wish: “I don’t want to be a legend, I want to be a writer, nothing more.” (I)