Tala; Lagar

Lucila Godoy Alcayaga (Vicuña, Chile, 1889 - Hampstead, USA, 1957) was supplanted in literature by Gabriela Mistral, but she remained Lucila Godoy in relation to her profession as a teacher. The pseudonym, the one used publicly, demarcates territories, shapes the gesture of literary authorship, and defines it as a site of poetic creation. From "Tala" to "Lagar" there are differences and continuities. If the title "Tala" alludes to the necessary stripping away to undertake writing, defined by the cutting and the lack (the felling), "lagar" (the place where grapes are trodden) appears as a trope of poetic production that draws on experiential remnants and previous writings.