A few days after the Valencian Courts rejected – with the votes of PP and Vox – celebrating the year dedicated to the centenary of the birth of Vicent Andrés Estellés (Burjassot, 1924-València, 1993), the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes (ILC) has announced the beginning of the commemoration in Catalonia, yes, but also with events in all Catalan-speaking territories and beyond, and many of them, also, in collaboration with the Cent d’ Estellés civic platform, made up of numerous Valencian entities. Even so, the councils of Valencia and Alicante – where the PP also governs – did declare Any Estellés, as well as numerous town councils.
The poet Àngels Gregori will be in charge of curating this year’s programming, with the objectives of “reinforcing the poetic production of Estellés as essential reading”, as well as “exporting it outside our linguistic borders”, delving into it and also “uniting everything the linguistic territory through initiatives”, to enjoy his poetry but also “the social mark that he left with a unique voice of overflowing power”.
The director of the ILC, Izaskun Arretxe, points out the contrast with the Any Fuster, two years ago, which could be held jointly with the Generalitat Valenciana and the Balearic Government: “We would very much like to have been able to collaborate now, because as a team we work better and his work could be disseminated more.” In any case, “where institutions do not reach, people will arrive.” For Gregori, it is one more flagrant case of “cultural and linguistic censorship,” but “with what is happening we want to celebrate it even more.”
But why should we read Burjassot’s poet today? For the curator, “he is the most important Valencian poet since Ausiàs Marc, author of a work that you will never finish, and there is no need to suffer even if it seems chaotic and unattainable”, with a great variety of registers, which combines a marked popular accent –“he approached big themes from small things”– with the rereading of the classics. “We have to rediscover him,” she continues, because “as the poet Enric Sòria says, he is recognized, but not enough for how good he is.” According to Arretxe, “if you read Estellés you fall in love with him, and it is about many people reading him and falling in love.” He is the author, do not forget, of poems such as Els amants, M’aclame a tu or Propietats de la pena, a poet widely set to music: Ovidi Montllor and Toti Soler, but also Maria Arnal and Marcel Bagés, Obrint Pas, Zoo, Miquel Gil or even Els Surfing Sirles.
The institutional program to celebrate the centenary will begin on World Poetry Day, March 21, which will revolve around his poem M’he estimat molt la vida, with a great event at the CCCB, but also in other places in Catalonia. An important emphasis has been placed on the educational field, with educational dossiers to work on the poet’s work both in primary, secondary and high school, but also several academic sessions, such as an international conference at the University of Alicante. Also internationally, the Institut Ramon Llull has organized several academic and dissemination events dedicated to the poet.
Gregori and Arretxe also wanted to highlight the presence that Estellés will have at literary fairs and festivals, whether it be the Girona Poetry Festival or those of València, Lleida, Tarragona or Oliva, the Barcelona Poesia or the Xarxa de Viles del Llibre , among many others. They have also highlighted, for September 26, the so-called “Estellés dinners” – more than eighty are planned –, where “literature is celebrated, read and shared in a kind of simultaneous collective catharsis,” recalls Arretxe, who highlights that the poet “never stopped claiming the joy of living.” He will even have a Falla monument dedicated to him, the Falla Tio Pep.
But there will also be two shows based on the Coral Romput – the great poem popularized by Ovidi Montllor and Toti Soler –, one by Pere Arquillué and Toti Soler – who also gives another recital with Joan Massotkleiner –, and a stage project by Marina Alegre and Marc Chornet, or the two productions – one musical and one theatrical – by singer-songwriter Pau Alabajos.
Alabajos, on the other hand, is one of the authors of the publications that leave the year of the centenary (“the years end, but the books remain”, remembers Arretxe), since he has just published the first biography of Estellés, La veu of a town (Sembra Llibres). The publishing house 3i4, which was instrumental in disseminating his work and which has just published volumes X and XI of his revised complete work – which include a part of the monumental Mural of the Valencian Country -, and will publish the XII during this year, in addition to an anthology curated by Jaume Pérez-Montaner, Una tendresa oculta, with about 200 poems and more than 400 pages. In addition, Saldonar has just published Oli calent del gresol de la vida, under the care of Josep Ballester, his three first books in a single volume, and Peu de Mosca will republish La clau que obre touts les panys, with a prologue by Josep Murgades and illustrations by Clara-Iris
A monumental work, but at the same time popular and not unattainable. Who is afraid of poetry?
Catalan version, here
