Joan Margarit (1938-2021) wrote that “freedom is a bookstore”. He argued that there are no disputes in a bookstore. All the books speak quietly, but loudly, knowing that on neighboring shelves there are others advocating different things, and yet there are no fights.
In his private bookstore there were Verdaguer or Antonio Machado, authors who expressed themselves in Margarit’s mother tongue and almost mother tongue. Among many other volumes poets such as Homer, Rilke, Thomas Hardy, Elisabeth Bishop or Sharon Olds were cited. In 2018, with her grandson Eduard Lezcano, this American poet wrote the Spanish version of Stag’s Leap, a poem published in 2012 in which she explores details of her divorce and for which she received the Pulitzer Prize.
“I have known that Sharon Olds is a great poet for a long time, when I first read Satan says, but doing these versions has meant, in addition to reading a good book of poems, an important level of learning for my own craft as a poet”, he stated in the prologue of his translation. These words guarantee that, from this Thursday, Margarit and Olds will share the same shelf in their bookstore. At the headquarters of the Cervantes Institute in New York, King Felipe VI presented Olds with the first international Joan Margarit poetry prize, promoted by the institute itself, by the publishing house La Cama Sol and the poet’s family.
“When I found out that I had been awarded this recognition, it was as if I had received a gift from heaven”, said Olds after feeling the award, created by the sculptor Cristina Almodóvar.
“I apologize for my Californian accent when encouraging the arts, which, in any case, can save our Earth and ourselves,” added this woman who was born in San Francisco and settled in the Big Apple decades ago.
The distinction is based on the fact that Olds is considered a benchmark in American poetry for “his non-conformist and genuine writing”. Also highlighted is “his commitment to the truth and the merciless presence of life in his poetry”
This is how the jury, made up of Luis García Montero, director of the Cervantes Institute; Javier Santiso, founder of La Cama Sol; Mònica Margarit, daughter of the poet; Ana Santos, director of the National Library; and the Italian philosopher Nuccio Ordine, Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, who died recently.
In an exercise of frankness and humility unusual for presidents, the monarch acknowledged that the granting of this prize had discovered “a work that he did not know before”.
“Margarit and Olds cast doubt with their verses on the romantic twinning between beauty and truth”, stressed the poet García Montero. “Sharon Olds neither sits nor sits at the table of lies,” he emphasized.
This creative reflection connects with the principles of the Catalan poet, who said that without erudition there would continue to be poetry, but without truth, no.
Olds praised Margarit’s work. “His poems were unlike anything I had ever read. The clarity, the quality, the piety, the honesty, the humor, the wit and the architectural solidity of the music were marvels to me. I wish I could write more like this and possibly since then I have written a little more like this because of his teachings and his themes of common light and love,” he revealed.
She was the winner, but the evening became a tribute to the Catalan colleague. There was a projection of Margarit reciting, a real spectacle of the word. As his daughter remarked, he was “enthusiastic about reciting and filled the whole space with his powerful voice”. Just as he used to do, he read three poems (A simple goodbye, A price and The highest mountain), in Spanish, English and Catalan.
Mònica Margarit stated that the international character of this recognition will allow her father’s work to be disseminated in other countries where his work may not be known and fulfills the mission of making foreign authors known in Catalan and Spanish. “I think he would be happy”, said the daughter about the establishment of the award that bears her father’s name.
