Swallowing, by Valdenia Silva, and other reading suggestions for 2026.

Every year it's almost always the same thing: start going to the gym, read more, go out with friends, eat healthy food, prioritize family, and drink less. Of all of them, the only one I intend to accomplish is "read more," and the only one I definitely won't accomplish is "start going to the gym." The books I will read in 2026 are already organized into three piles on my desk. We know that 2026 will not be easy. Thus, a little reading here and there can help us bear the lightness and the weight that the new year holds for us. 

In my three piles are chronicles, essays, short stories, and biographies. The novels I intended to read were already planned for 2025. This doesn't mean that other novels won't appear during the coming year. If they do, they will be added to the piles. The point is to move forward, because as the astrophysicist Chamkaur Ghag reminds us: "time advances and never goes back." Among the books on my desk, which will very soon be four, five, or six piles, I'm gazing longingly at the book... History is contemporary literature.: manifesto for the social sciences (2020), by Ivan Jablonka, in pile one. Next to it, Racial literacy: a proposal for the reconstruction of Brazilian democracy (2025), by Adilson José Moreira, which engages very well with How to be an anti-racist educator (2023), by Bárbara Carine, who, in turn, has a good chat with I only hit big dogs, my size or bigger.: 81 lessons from the Sueli Carneiro method (2025), by Cidinha da Silva, and Algorithmic racism: artificial intelligence and discrimination on social networks (2022), by Tarcízio Silva. 

In the second pile, they rest Hey reader (2025), book with texts by Alberto Manguel and other authors, Biographical streets (2025), by Emmanuel Montenegro, Revolutionaries of criticism: five critics who changed the way we read (2024), by Terry Eagleton and Chomsky and Mujica: Surviving the 21st Century (2025), by Saúl Alvídrez. Among those who make up pile three, RaoniMemoirs of the Chief (2025) Essential Chomsky (2024), edited by Anthony Arnove, Peaches and Other Stories (2025), by Dylan Thomas and Swallow (2022), by Valdenia Silva, a book that demands our attention. 

Swallow This is a book of poems by Valdenia Silva that, although published in 2022 by Radiadora publishing house, only now has "fallen" into my hands. I chose this book to inaugurate all the other readings I will do throughout 2026. I hit the nail on the head, as it is a work of very high literary quality in which the author constructs a poetics whose verses discuss social, political, and cultural issues without straying from the lightness and affections that constitute good poetry, as we can see in the verses: "What destiny to give to my stamp collection, /if I no longer have your address?" (p. 53), "Affections do not survive on crumbs" (p. 59), and also: "It doesn't matter: /Whoever writes a poem/also saves themselves." 

In addition to themes such as love, pain, blindness, femininity, femicide, racism, and other struggles we face daily, the poems of Swallow They are full of intertextual references, which point to readings made by the poet herself. The title Swallow It already brings with it an approximation to the work. The Swallows (2009), by Paulina Chiziane. And thus, we observe the poetry of Swallow to engage in dialogue with the literature produced by Carlos Drummond de Andrade (pp. 20, 22, 52, 62, 68, 81), Belchior (p. 34), João Bosco and Aldir Blanc (p. 35), Chico Buarque (p. 36), Cecília Meireles (p. 39), Manuel Bandeira (pp. 50, 86), T.S. Eliot and Adélia Prado (p. 63), Clarice Lispector (pp. 65, 67), Schopenhauer (p. 70), the Beatles (p. 71), Raul Seixas (p. 80), Rachel de Queiroz (p. 84) and Shakespeare (p. 85) among many others. 

Valdenia Silva's poetry is among the best that has been produced in Brazilian literature, which brings it close to the poetry practiced by Orides Fontela, Angélica Freitas, Stephanie Borges, and Lupi Prates, for example. In drawing this comparison with foreign authors, I am not afraid to say that her poetics closely dialogue with those produced by Pat Parker, Audre Lorde, Claudia Rankine, Adrienne Rich, and Jean "Binta" Breeze, among many others. SwallowThe poet Valdenia Silva offers us words. And that's all. In her own voice, we have: "I offer you words/like someone embroidering events." After this verse, ladies and gentlemen, anything else that can be said here becomes completely irrelevant.