I'm a failed novelist.

A new voice

I’m a failed novelist, but fortunately, I will always have poetry.

When I came up with the idea of starting a Substack as a way to release my frustrations, I ended up reinventing myself by accident.

How did it all begin?

First, I wanted to start writing in English. That was the first challenge, since English is not my first language.

Every poet knows that language, in all its complexity, is the core of poetry. A poem that moves the reader depends on intentional choices: words, pauses, spacing, and the images it evokes.

There’s a line of dialogue from Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2016) that captures what I mean:

“If you immerse yourself into a foreign language, then you can actually rewire your brain.”

“It affects how you see everything.”

I’ve published two poetry collections in the last five years. My style in Spanish (my native language) is dark, painful, dense, almost baroque, gothic, even cursed. It leans heavily on adjectives and builds moments that could belong to a tragic opera.

But when I sat down to write in English, I realized I couldn’t do the same. Not because of the language barrier, but because a new language demanded a new approach.

Suddenly, I felt the need to create a voice that could say a lot with very little, use simple language to create vivid images, and turn ordinary moments into something that lingers.

Matsuo Bashō came to mind almost immediately:

Spring is passing.

The birds cry, and the fishes’ eyes are

With tears.

Haiku has the power to transform the ordinary, to give life to what is almost nothing. And that was exactly what I wanted to achieve.

That’s how small wounds was born, and with it, a new version of myself.

In the first poem I published, you can still see traces of my Spanish voice: long, image-heavy, somber, and painful.

But the Kasu of small wounds asks for something else. Not minimalism in the sense of white walls and Scandinavian furniture, but a minimalism where silence carries what words cannot.

As days go by, I keep refining this new voice. I’ve even been rewriting that first poem, trying to shape it into something simpler, more ambiguous, and slightly uncomfortable.

feeling too much

for you

for me

feeling

enough

for both of us

you stay

in the dark

I don’t know

how to reach you

but I hear you

sometimes

when everything

is quiet

I’m still not sure whether I should edit the original post, or leave it as it is, as a record of change.

After all, something new has been born in me, and it keeps growing with every line, at a pace I can’t fully control.

I suppose each language forces us to think and feel differently. It reveals emotions and moments that can only exist within that particular way of seeing.

In the future, I’d like to write about the sequences, the hidden narratives, and the meaning behind my poems, about how they connect, and about space, time, and silence.

I hope some of you will want to stay as I begin again, and maybe begin again with me.

Kasu

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