Josep Piera (Beniopa, La Safor, 1947), fresh off the 55th award of Honor of the Catalan Letters, comes on a trip to Barcelona, ??and the audience attending the presentation of the award, at the Palau de la Música, travels to the universe of ‘honored with a show whose title is that of one of his poems: Baraca que, appropriate in times of drought, does like this: “Water is life, / says the bright laughter of the river.” / Water is life, / the tops of the poplars on the riverbank rumble. / Water is life, / the drain sings clean and transparent. / Water is life, / I dream of the friendly shadow that accompanies me. / Water is life. / I sit there. Listen: / water is life, water is life… / And I feel the moon on my lips / that offers me warm and sweet / the tasty smell of healthy grass. / A fresh voice / from inside tells me: / water is life”. The shack, the luck that hasn’t eluded him completely for so many years.
Ana Brenes begins by singing a popular Valencian tune, and Elies Barberà, Raquel Ferri and Xavier Francès review the biography, between the thematic and geographical areas, of childhood or paella – “an exaltation of life” that structures the show while they cook it as they cook metaphors, because “to be a paeller is to be an artist of the ephemeral”, they say – and the disease in his Valencia, Sicily, Greece or Marrakesh or in Andalusian poetry – and especially Ibn Khafaja -, which they came before and before poetry in their own language. “Everyone is everyone and makes their cascunaes”, they remember, as the poet has repeated many times.
Manuel Forcano’s gloss focuses more on his work, which begins by recalling that Piera has not come alone, that in addition to his family and readers, he is accompanied by Ausiàs Marc, Joanot Martorell, Francesc de Borja or Sandro Penna, as well as his characters from “the post-war whore” and “the fantastic seventies”. And again the Andalusians he translated, of course. A Mediterranean writer, starting from poetry and going back further.
And reciting now in Arabic, now in Greek, now in Hebrew or also in Latin, Forcano passes through the garden, through the sea, through the south, through love, which he has mastered: “I no longer know how to write love poems” , begins a poem, until it says that “to you et cante ara, sols a tu”, according to the glossator “a whole declaration of love to all of us, to all readers in the Catalan language”.
Next, Xavier Antich, president of Òmnium Cultural, which awards the prize, praises Piera because “she has returned to us the richest and most subtle language”, that hers “is not an individual writing”, but collective and political.
A long ovation and Piera receives the award with the audience standing. The poet has not prepared any speech, and chooses to improvise some “thank you capitals” and recognizes himself as “overwhelmed”. He talks about his Drova, a valley that he defines as “a Greece without temples”, his place in the world, his home, where he has met so many times with so many poets, and makes it present in a poem and fishes a short recital well accompanied not only by other poets such as Khafaja, Jordi de Sant Jordi, Ausiàs Marc and Joan Roís de Corella, because poetry belongs to everyone and no one and is always now, but also with the priceless music of maestro Jordi Savall (viola de gamba) and Xavier Díaz-Latorre (thiorba).
The event ends with La muixeranga, the anthem for many Valencians, and Els segadors sung in chorus by an audience that fills the Palau with readers, previous prize winners such as Maria Barbal and Antònia Vicenç or writers such as Miquel de Palol, Àngels Gregori, Antònia Carré-Pons or Àlex Broch, in addition to authorities and politicians such as the president of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Pere Aragonès; the president of the Valencian Courts, Enric Morera; the new president of the Parliament of Catalonia, Anna Erra; the minister of Catalan Culture, Natàlia Garriga, and the Minister of Social Rights, Carles Campuzano or the president of ERC, Oriol Junqueras.
