Sebastià Alzamora: "Poetry does not spare you any pain"

PalmA new award is added to the career of Sebastià Alzamora (Llucmajor, 1972), already recognized with awards such as the Carles Riba, the Sant Jordi and the Jocs Florals de Barcelona, among others. But upon receiving the Josep Maria Llompart for best poetry work in Catalan for Sala Augusta, followed by Llengua materna (Proa), awarded by the Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC) within the framework of the Cavall Verd awards, the writer considers that he is the one who is added to a list of authors who, he says, he hopes not to disappoint. Miquel Martí i Pol, Vicent Andrés Estellés and Antònia Vicens, among others, have received it before him. “It gives a special thrill because those who recognize your work are your colleagues, the people with whom you share your profession,” he confesses.

How have you received this new award?

— It was a very great joy that has been increasing with the passing of the days. You stop to think about who has received it throughout history and you hope not to do injustice to the list [Riu]. Beyond the winners of each year, these awards are to celebrate that we have a living literature and poetry, with a diversity of proposals and ways of understanding it. And this is a lot of horsepower against those who would want our language and culture, which is Catalan, to be in decline or on the verge of disappearing. It is quite the opposite.

Say “they are the Catalan language and culture” because we are at a time when it must be emphasized that this is so.

— Indeed, I have very expressly highlighted it. We have to say it at every step because there are those who want to doubt it. And it is a shame that public authorities play with this, all to make some very cheap political maneuvers, using language and culture as bargaining chips. Fortunately, in a while we will no longer remember them, these bad rulers, and language, culture, and poetry will continue to move forward.

In Sala Augusta you talk about when Le Senne destroyed the photo of Aurora Picornell and you say that “they wanted to repeal the memory law / they found it divisive”. They have already repealed it.

— Well, I don't mention him by name because he doesn't deserve it, he's an insignificant character. But the two poems that make up the book are about memory and in favor of memory, both collective and personal. Sala Augusta is openly antifascist: it is written against fascism, the one we suffered in the Balearic Islands and throughout Europe and the West. Regarding the repeal of the law, it didn't take a great fortune teller to see that it would end like this. It's the political game we are currently in, where a fascist party makes demands that another party, of the supposedly democratic right, accepts.

In the same poem, you collect real facts, with names and surnames, of people you meet who are not to be forgotten. And it's not just the victims of the Civil War, but also the executioners. There are those who want to pretend they never existed.

— They were very proud of what they did; therefore, it is right that we remember them with the pride of murdering, intimidating, and defaming. It wasn't just the murders, which is the most tragic part and what draws our attention the most. There was also defamation, mockery, and lies against the families of the murdered, who had to endure it in silence because, if not, it was even worse. And I believe that this deserves to be remembered, not for revenge, but because it explains how our society has been shaped. It explains, for example, why some people are rich today.

Jordi Nopca said it in the interview he did with her when they published the poetry collection: if Sala Augusta is a journey into darkness, Lengua materna is a luminous poem dedicated to your mother.

— I did not intend to make a lament or an elegy for my mother, because when I started working on it she was alive. I wanted to write a poem about a childhood memory that was very linked to her work as a riveter, and I had thought of it so that she could read it. But while I was writing it, she died and that upset the plan. It forced me to rethink everything, including Sala Augusta, because losing your mother is a very strong life moment. We all go through it, at one time or another, but it is a before and an after. It forces you to re-examine everything you have in hand.

And yet, you have produced a very luminous poem, which I don't know to what extent it has been permeated by grief. Or if it has served you, precisely, to get through it.

— Poetry does not spare you any pain. If anything, it can help you face it, but no matter how much poetry you write, if your mother has died, your mother has died. And you are as helpless in the face of this fact as anyone else. What happens is that you can have the opportunity to put into poetic form some facts, some life moments, that are yours, but that can be shared. The daily affections we experience, in this case with our mothers, may initially go unnoticed, but they are what end up building our identity, our way of being and seeing the world.

“My mother taught me to see angels / although, to be precise, we didn’t see them”. Was it she who taught you imagination, fantasy, poetry?

— Like many people of her time and age, my mother could not study much, but she had a poetic gaze without intending to or proposing to, as happens to many people. Poetry is a more frequent occurrence than we think. It is part of people, of the way we understand the world. And I remember these conversations about angels, where I did what boys do, which is to ask. And I would ask her what angels were and she would make up a movie and do what adults do with children, which is to have fun and explain things in the most suitable way they find. Physically, the angels did not appear, but it didn't matter. To me they were absolutely real. And they still are.