Frank Castell, winner of the 2018 Hispano-American Poetry Prize of San Salvador and the 2021 Dulce María Loynaz Poetry Prize, is one of the most original voices in contemporary Cuban poetry. He is also one of the bravest. On the island, with more than a thousand political prisoners, his poem “Prisoners” resonated among many Cuban families.

They rot beyond the cells.
I can feel them secretly guarding their hearts.

Ah, ruins of the country,
ruins of blood,
ruins of insomnia,
uncomfortable ruins
of shame.
They rot.
They die.
They are forgotten.
The world is silent
and the bars
are coffins in the stanzas of the hymn.

When he began writing in 1996, he studied Spanish and Literature at the Instituto Superior Pedagógico in Las Tunas. Poetry was the genre he felt most comfortable with until one day he was told about a narrator who had a writing style and life outside the provincial logic.

The day he was introduced to Guillermo Vidal, Castell thought he had met a man of faith and immense courage. Vidal welcomed him and a friend, Osmany Oduardo, into his modest home.

He said to them sarcastically: “Do you want to be writers? Don’t you see how I live? Don’t you know the problems I have to face every day? A writer is not well regarded. It is uncomfortable, misunderstood. Do you really want to be writers?”

They answered yes, and from that moment on they became his children. Two or three times a week they went to his house to talk and share their work. Thanks to Guillermo Vidal, Castell met other men who gravitated toward the literary creation environment in Cuba, such as Amir Valle and Eduardo Heras León. It is something that Castell says he will not forget.

His literary path began like that of many young people born under socialism, joining a literary workshop called Cucalambé, directed by the poet Carlos Téllez Espino, where he published his first texts, began to win prizes, and to create work that little by little made its way into the national scene.

Before venturing into the world of writing, Castell converted to Christianity. In 1995, while he was a recruit for the Compulsory Military Service in an artillery regiment, two young men who belonged to his battery preached to him.

“I remember that we met, in secret with two others, and we shared the reading for about an hour,” Castell said. However, it wasn’t until 1998 that he decided to attend a church. He was going through a very difficult time in all aspects of his life. “So one night I went to the Los Pinos Nuevos Church. My way of seeing life changed. From being the almost suicidal young man, without hope, to finding a meaning, a reason to find the way to Jesus.”

Castell’s work is in constant transformation. Each book marks a different rhythm. “The presence of God has been in it directly or indirectly. As irreverent as I was, something told me that I should not take God in vain.” He has written in the décima, that form of traditional Cuban poetry very popular in rural areas, and in other genres.

In 1999, he wrote an essay under the title “El tema bíblico en la décima de los noventa,” a project that Castell himself considered very ambitious and that perhaps would have been the work of his life. “But I left it because poetry was my way of expression, the escape valve.”

The fact of being a Christian did not prevent Guillermo Vidal from writing novels such as “Los cuervos,” “Las manzanas del paraíso,” or “La saga del seguido,” nor from being a person who touched the wound, who wrote without fear of reprisals. “Nothing of the sort,” said Castell, referring to works that dealt with issues such as the misfortune and moral decrepitude of Cuban society.

Some considered his conversion to Christianity to be a defect. “Within the artistic guild there was always some revelry,” Castell remarked. “The artistic world is full of lights and shadows. Thank God I received the support of Guillermo Vidal and Alberto Garrido, who showed me that one should not be ashamed of the gospel.”

Nor was it an obstacle for Castell to focus his work on reality, on the miseries, and on the risk of living in a country where Christians are seen as enemies. “Maybe they disguise it, but you can always see the seam, the scar, the trap. Being a Christian in a country where the Communist Party (which denies the existence of God) is complicated.”

An official in charge of the cultural sector in Las Tunas sent a message to Castell that made this clear: “Frank, I see in your publications that you seek God with your family, I have always heard of various representatives of religious denominations who are not linked to politics and are dedicated to their works. I know of your talent, a person formed in this society and with results for his talent is ideal; We hope that you continue to be a worthy son of Puerto Padre. Greetings.”

Castell felt that message as a subtle threat. “How little he knows me! Every day, when I open my eyes, I thank Christ for having saved me. I am not afraid of persecution because Christ has made me free.”

“Book after book, my work delves into the deep Cuba,” he observed. “That which I try to make invisible. I have been out of the cultural life of this country since 2019. I left the (official) Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba and all ties, events, publications. Being respectful, ethical, and with international awards, was of no use to me. I continue to write from freedom a work consistent with this time.”

In 2013, he began a novel that he published in 2020 with the independent publishing house Ilíada Ediciones. The subject of “The Machinery” was thorny: the story of two young people who refuse to collaborate with State Security.

Castell believes that there is nothing more uncomfortable for a repressor than facing an artist, because an artist has to be faithful to his work. “The interesting thing about all this is that soon after I wrote it, the country began to wake up, to come out, and they can’t stop that. There is ‘The Machinery’ waiting for new readers.”

Because of his position, he believes that he has been relegated, humiliated and forgotten, but none of that has made him give up. On the contrary, he sees it as a motivation to continue writing. “It is the price I have to pay. In 2003, I wrote with a young theater director, ‘The Island of the Dwarf Cyclops,’ a play about emigration and the horror of living on an island without hope, without faith. When you write knowing that you will not be published, you have to look for alternatives outside of Cuba. I hope that one day it can be released or published.”

He still has several unpublished poetry collections waiting for contests or publishers. Censorship is brutal.

“I have three children, Frank Eduardo, Gabriela, and Alejandro. The oldest has not yet accepted Jesus, but every day I pray that he will have an encounter with the one who conquered death on the cross of Calvary. It is very hard to go out for a walk and see so much pain on people’s faces, noble people who were betrayed in the cruelest way,” he said about his personal life.

When asked what he thinks about the current state of Cuba, he invites people to read his books. Whoever reads them, he says, will know. “I don’t care that I don’t attend fairs and events outside of Cuba. I’m not interested in belonging to the privileged group that barely has time to write because they go from plane to plane just to be ‘politically correct.’ The poet writes for the future. As I answered Amir Valle in an interview: The artist will always be a thorn in the side of any system.”

“Persecuted”

They let themselves be killed,
but their faces light up the forests
and the squares,
the centuries of a death
that is undefined.
They let themselves be killed in prisons
or in anonymous towns,
on days that are embedded
like bullets and knives. They let themselves be killed and write with their blood
Jesus,
while the world is a growing and trembling silence.
They let themselves be killed and disappear,
but their souls shine
when the persecutors
return satisfied
with their crime.