The lady I met this morning lives on the east bank of the Gatineau River in a hundred year old house near the Lady Aberdeen Bridge. Borka Sattler has spent the last nine years in Canada and, when not painting or writing, is the Peruvian Embassy's Cultural Attachée (agregada cultural de la embajada del Perú).
Having served us from a table of refreshments most artistically tiered in front of a wall she had used as the canvas for a huge, abstract painting, and having handed each of us a copy of her 1997 novela, Doña Tránsito Abril, she led us to her bright studio at the back of the house where she read us a story, Manuela, set in 1940s Peru, from the book she published in 2003: La Cama Verde .
In her colourful living room full of her recent oil paintings of women's faces hung a ceramic plaque on which was written:
AQUI VIVE UN POETA
Another pertinent message caught my eye beside the doorway to her studio, this one a quotation in English:
Artistic creativity will keep you alive.
A sample of her poetry can be found here.
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