Looking Back: 10 Years of Salt — The Trees

I’ll never forget this day. It was late winter, 2004 (6 years ago, how can that be?!) and I was sitting at my desk in the cramped, hot and chaotic space that was the Salt office, tucked away at the back of the house, when the phone rang. It was the BBC’s Venezuelan Correspondent, who proceded to tell me that he’d been to see 21 Grams and had seen on the internet that we were publishing the poet quoted in it and could he have a copy of the book, please.

Pardon?

I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, but couldn’t possibly say that! I managed to glean that one of our soon-to-be published poets, Eugenio Montejo, had been quoted by Sean Penn in a film that was due to be released in the UK in 3 week’s time. A quick Google search revealed that we were the last to know this as the whole world seemed to be talking about it! I told Chris who quickly dug the files out – fortunately, we were close to finishing the proofing cycle and we set to work immediately to get The Trees ready for press. This though wasn’t quite as straightforward as it seemed: Eugenio Montejo was in Venezuela and spoke little English; his translator, Peter Boyle, was in Australia — to speak to the author we had to jump through international time zones on a global scale. It took several days to get enough information together to write the press release, with each of our questions requiring at least a two-day turnaround.

It turns out that the maker of the film, Alejandro González Iñárritu, had stumbled across Montejo’s work in dusty volumes in a library in the US. He was particularly taken by one of the poems, the remarkable ‘La Tierra Giró para Acercarnos’; ‘The Earth Turned to Bring us Closer’, and arranged with Montejo to have an English translation of it incorporated into the film. Despite Montejo being Venezuela’s most celebrated poet, little if any of his work had been translated from Spanish.

Meanwhile, while all this was happening, Peter Boyle was working with Montejo to pull together a bilingual selection of his work. And Peter had told us about the film, but it hadn’t registered! We issued a press release and got the book out in time for the film showing in the UK (the cover image was taken one foggy morning by Chris on the village green). The media picked up on it and we managed to get coverage in the Bookseller as well as the press and local radio (I was interviewed – it was terrifying!).

We had great fun with this book, including an excuse to go to the cinema during working hours. However, if you’ve seen 21 Grams, you’ll know that watching it in the morning isn’t perhaps the best of moves – we left the cinema dumbstruck and unable to function for the rest of the day, such is the power of it, particularly Benicio del Toro, whose performance is amazing. Sean Penn quoting from ‘The Earth Turned’ is such a poignant part of the story, it moves me even now. That film and this book will always be special to me.

Sadly, Eugenio Montejo died in 2008. I am pleased that it was Salt who brought his work to the English-speaking world. If you are seeking beautifully-written, life-affirming poetry, I wholeheartedly recommend that you look no further than The Trees.

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