The last Ojo Crítico de Poesía award, by Sevillian Laura Rodríguez Díaz (1998), was published in Barcelona at the end of last year. Corazonada, the new collection of poems by Berta García Faet (Valencia, 1988), one of the best poets in Spanish, has been published in the same city, because since Anagrama acquired La Nueva Varsovia in 2021, its headquarters are on the street Pau Claris The editor, the writer Elena Medel, lives in Madrid. But the Catalan domicile of the two projects is causing a good part of the best verses published on paper by authors under 40 years of age from all over the State to reach bookstores with Barcelona copyright.
García Faet defines his relationship with the city as “very intense”, because he lived here “in two very important periods of my life, and here I grew a lot intellectually and literary, I owe a lot to the Master in Political Philosophy of Pompeu Fabra”. His “loving and fragmentary” relationship with literature in Catalan is also important, “without a doubt, Mercè Rodoreda and Blanca Llum Vidal are fundamental writers for me”. She was impressed, during her visit in January to participate in the literary cafés of Casa Seat, the local Anagrama and she loved “chatting and receiving very good recommendations, with booksellers from Finestres, Documenta, La Central, Calders and the Crisis Space”.
Alberto Haller, editorial director of Barlin Libros, who has published García Faet’s essay El arte de encender las palabras, came to the presentation from Valencia. The poignant dimension of the poetry, in which the author not only outlines a personal poetics and analyzes several literary themes with absolute formal freedom, such as the “idea-premonition”, also intervenes in the classic debate between the supporters of the poetry of experience or communication and the defenders of poetry as knowledge, with the will to overcome it. In a context of poetry readings from all eras, from all over the world and from all ages.
Bella Varsovia has been characterized, since its origins exactly twenty years ago, by its faith in the emergency. Some of the authors in the catalog are now references (María Sánchez, Andrés Neuman), but there is always room for new authors. Some of them are Juli Mesa, Leire Bilbao or Sara Torres, who in 2016 published Conjuros y cantos at Kriler71, another Barcelona publishing house that also believes in risk and ambition.
Ultramarinos was born in 2016 and is directed by Barcelona native Unai Velasco, who had won the Miguel Hernández National Young Poetry Award three years earlier with his book En este lugar (Esto no es Berlin, 2012). In the prologue of the last title he has published, Hacerse una foto en el espejo del baño, by Julio Fuertes (1989), he recalls the trips to Madrid at the beginning of the last decade together with university colleagues, such as Marc García and Mario Amadas That connection through the AVE and the successive low cost lines has been fundamental for the new Spanish poetry. As has also been the mastery of some figures from previous generations, such as Sergio Gaspar, first editor of Medel and adviser to Ultramarinos.
“I am convinced that Barcelona has the greatest potential in the State to lead an alternative culture model, which can de facto propose a plurilingual cultural model”, says Velasco, “for example, bookstores such as Nollegiu and Finestres systematically offer literature in the language Galician on its shelves”. Both Ultramarinos and La Bella Varsovia publish books written in other languages ??of the Peninsula: the latter has published Bestia, by Irene Solà, translated by Velasco; and that one, Este amor que no és u · Este amor que no es uno, by Vidal, translated by García Faet, in addition to Pol Guasch or the collected poetry of the Galician poet Chus Pato.
Another label from Barcelona, ??Animal Sospechoso, which runs the bookstore of the same name in Gràcia -with intense poetic activity-, has published Bajo sospecha, an anthology of poets born between 1976 and 1993 who write in Spanish, Catalan, Basque and Galician.
This transversality is embodied by the poet and bookseller Claudia González Caparrós in her own biography. The author of Si la carne es hierba (Sully Morland) and te miro como quien asiste a un deshielo (both in La Bella Varsovia), was born in A Coruña in 1993, studied Literary Studies in Barcelona and a master’s degree in Madrid and another in the United States. He then co-founded Espai Crisi in our city, on Calle Floridablanca, which is defined as a space for “critical thinking where you can learn and think together”.
This is what the young poets of today seem to be doing, in their verses and in their publishing houses.
