Barcelona

Manel Ollé gathered in Un grapat de pedres d’aigua (“A handful of water stones”) a composition of haibun –an Oriental poem made of poetic prose followed by a haiku as a coda. In this book, Ollé brings haibun to his own sphere, introducing high doses of urban life experience in a kind of literature that usually is pure and exalted. Throughout his work, this poet looks for a magical moment where a poem must be born amongst his everyday life –understanding beauty not just as a simple setting, but as what makes us aware of the step of time, the fragility of every single thing and the complex and violent reality we live in.

This book was published after winning the 2021 Barcelona’s poetry contest (Jocs Florals).

David Caño’s Un cos preciós per destruir (“A Beautiful body to destroy”) was published after winning the 2019 Barcelona’s poetry contest (Jocs Florals). This book is a compendium of many features and motifs of his poetic career: the city of Barcelona, the mixture of naïve and perverse, the fascination with the emblematic places of struggle (Beirut, Warsaw, Berlin, Portbou), certain artistic references (Caravaggio, Pasolini, Janis Joplin, Jim Jarmusch) and a taste for contrast and cinematic rhythm.

Maria is a long love poem –understanding love in a classical sense, if you wish. What has been sung so many times –and what is always different. What brings us closer to life thanks to another and gives a meaning to ourselves. What reveals to us who we are and what we still want to be. What puts us in time.

This book explores this raison d’être –which is at the same time rooted in the world and transcending us, as well as in the tradition of the mystics. Maria explores the particular religion that arises between two people and that reveals almost all the answers to almost all the questions.

Maria is “her” and it is also the historical and cultural resonances she implies. The final seven poems form a suite inspired by Haydn’s The Last Seven Words of Christ on the Cross and seeks to describe all the paths of love.

This book was published after winning the 2020 Barcelona’s poetry contest (Jocs Florals).