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

PalmaA 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 byLlengua materna (Proa), awarded by the Association of Writers in Catalan Language (AELC) within the framework of the Cavall Verd awards, the writer considers that he is the one who is joining 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’s a special thrill because those who recognize your work are your colleagues, the people with whom you share your craft,” he confesses.

How did you receive this new award?

— It was a very great joy that has been increasing with the passing of days. You stop to think about who has received it throughout history and you hope not to diminish 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 moment when it must be emphasized that this is so.

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

In Sala Augusta they talk about when Le Senne tore up Aurora Picornell's photo and say that they "wanted to repeal the memory law / they found it divisive". They have already repealed it.

— Well, I won't mention it by name because it doesn't deserve it, it'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 anti-fascist: it is written against fascism, which we suffer in the Balearic Islands and throughout Europe and the West. Regarding the repeal of the law, it wasn't necessary to be a great fortune-teller to see that it would end up like this. It's the political game we're currently in, where a fascist party makes demands that another party, from the supposedly democratic right, accepts.

In the same poem, you collect real facts, with names and surnames, of people you believe should not be forgotten. And they are not just the victims of the Civil War, but also the executioners. There are those who want to act as if they had 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 was not only the murders, which is the most tragic part and that 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 in the interview he did with you when you published the poetry collection: if Sala Augusta is a journey into darkness, Llengua materna is a luminous poem dedicated to your mother.

— I didn't intend to write 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 closely 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 disrupted 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's a before and an after. It forces you to re-examine everything you have in hand.

And yet, you have created a very luminous poem, which I don't know to what extent it has been crossed 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 vital 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 ultimately build our identity, our way of being and seeing the world.

“Mumare taught me to see the angels / although, to be rigorous, 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 outlook without intending or proposing it, as happens to many people. Poetry is a more frequent fact 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 children do, which is to ask. And I asked her what angels were and she invented a movie and did what adults do with children, which is to have fun and explain things to them in the most appropriate way they find. Angels did not appear physically, but it didn't matter. To me they were absolutely real. And they still are.