He confesses that he was never inclined to literature. In 2015 he attended the Guillermo Vidal literary workshop, based at the Provincial Committee of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC, by its acronym in Spanish), motivated by the micro-story, and then he was a few years away from the profession until he resumed those walks. Today he masters genres such as haikus, the Cuban stanza, the aphorism, the epigram, the sonnet, and short sonnet.

Las Tunas, Cuba.- When he rejoined those paths, the manifestation ended up catching him, winning awards in municipal and provincial meetings of literary workshops, a mention in the National Contest of Glosses Song Around the Point (2021), and in international contests, which have led him to be included in some anthologies.

Recently, Jorge Luis Reyes Peña was the winner of the first edition of the Antonio Borrego National Sonnet Contest, organized by the Uneac in Las Tunas, a contest that was born in honor of one of the great writers from this land. But there is no room for haughtiness in him and, as a man of faith, he affirms that "all glory is for God."

Entitled The labyrinth cross, the work has "26 possible readings, that is, they (the quartets) can be read in pairs, in any direction and sense: horizontal, vertical and diagonal, without losing coherence."

For Jorge Luis, this award has a special meaning, because he met the author of the famous poem Speech of a single man, and his advice has enlightened him on the path of letters.

"He and I cultivated a friendship for about six months. He would call me at any time to read me something of the latest inspiration, to tell me to brew coffee that was coming... I remember he would burst out laughing in approval at some epigram of mine, or he would remain serious and say: 'Think again'. The rhyming came after he left. I think the music of his poetry entered my subconscious and then germinated."

Reyes also thanks Antonio Gutiérrez, who has been close by, helping in his creative endeavors.

I ask him what is literature for him, and he gladly answers: "An art among the arts, an open door to the interior of homes and souls to sow seeds and, among all of us, make them germinate."

He feels a special predilection for brevities in any genre and tells me about one that he cultivates and I sincerely did not know: the oxymoron. But what really pleases him, like any good Christian, is to help others emotionally and spiritually. "Sometimes writers are attacked by emotions that can trigger alcoholism, mental imbalance, suicide attempts, and other evils. I address the souls of the afflicted."

It is not surprising then that he emphasizes in his work, from the thematic point of view, "the philosophy that makes people think, that contributes to human improvement". Thus Plato said: "Philosophy is the science of free men."

In this regard, he would write: "A philosopher no longer wanders, if life is enough for it when he discovers that the truths he has stored for years are insignificant light of the infinite, where the sum of all looks towards absolute truth. This truth does not have a name; it is a name."

"Thus, I value a type of poetry, distant in term and concept from the generic man, but quotidian and common in the expression of the verb of the individual in his reason and walk: The Sentence. As useful for the swift man, the one who believes in the error of sleep and the brevity of the day, as the one who reads from the reclining of his stool. It is but a capsule, a container of philosophy, with the virtue of the marksman who hits and the success of the undefeated chess player."

Words like these nuances a book of epigrams that he presented to the Sanlope publishing house under the title of Synergy. Hopefully, it will be published.

Curiously, Jorge Luis comes from the field of research and innovation applied to the industry. He is a technician in Industrial Electric System and has three medals as outstanding provincial of the National Association of Innovators and Rationalizers (ANIR, by its acronym in Spanish), plus that of Labor Achievement and the "Abel Santamaría."

He also has a degree in Theology and comments on how inventions and innovations influence (consciously or unconsciously) his literary universe. "In my specialty of Industrial Electricity and Electronics, as well as Computer Science and Industrial Automation, I was always motivated to find solutions based on my design. I believe that this same impulse to create is what motivates my writing today".

Although he is not much of a reader (he prefers to do short readings and go deeper into them), he takes literature to all possible spaces and, of course, the church could not miss it. Thus, he shares about the religious thought of José Martí in an old people's home, as well as worries about his brothers and sisters in faith to improve themselves, learning to cultivate different genres.

He never tires of exploring new horizons in that sense, experimentation, and search that will surely lead him to achieve other laurels in the difficult but beautiful path. Literature -as García Márquez said- "is the most propitious ground for the world to know that there is something called the light."