Blai Bonet Year

If in 2025 we celebrated the centenary of Josep M. Llompart's birth, in 2026 there will be a grand celebration for Blai Bonet, as it will be one hundred years since this illuminating writer came into the world to shake up life and poetry. Thanks to Edicions de 1984, we are fortunate to enter this Blai Bonet Year with the corrected and expanded critical edition of the Complete Poetry, by the writer from Santanyí, edited by Nicolau Dols and Gabriel ST Sampol, with a revised prologue by Margalida Pons. This fantastic 1,374-page volume expands upon what was published eleven years ago, recovering previously unpublished texts duly retrieved from the Bernat Vidal i Tomàs Archive, and also includes new poems or poems already known but with notable variations.

How fortunate are those who are still unfamiliar with Blai Bonet's contributions, and who, with this new milestone, have the opportunity to discover one of the most extraordinary and surprising poets in the history of literature. His verses, which sing of the world with an almost sacred intensity, erupt like a cavalcade of fire: they are electric language, intensity, and revelation. Within him beats an indomitable faith in life, surely because the poet saw death very close and it was with the help of Bernat Vidal i Tomàs that he found a good doctor and a good teacher. Blai Bonet possessed an unleashed passion that asked no permission and demanded everything with a breathtaking longing: body and soul, sensuality and mysticism, flesh and mystery, cry and silence. Bonet, in a sculptural or alchemical process, transforms the word into flammable, incandescent matter, into a reverberation that both blinds and inspires, capable of turning pain into a primordial source and ecstasy into a form of knowledge. His sun-drenched verses don't drift statically across the page; they invite gardeners to carry lemons to the sea and street kids to conquer the world. Blaibone's work shines like a hymn, a radiant affirmation that burns and transcends.

Lou Reed was so fascinated after reading English translations of New York who used the entire poem 'Al Brown' as an answering machine message, and prominent artists (Francisco Bernareggi, Miquel Barceló, Camargo, Tomeu Estelrich…) have broadened the boundaries of art by drawing inspiration from the universe of the poet who established The Gospel according to one of manyThis will not be the only book that Edicions de 1984 will release to commemorate the anniversary: Nicolau Dols and Gabriel ST Sampol and Margalida Pons will once again join forces to publish, in a single volume, the very first, never-before-published versions of the titles O Calvary, Calvary and The young manWith recoveries like these, we can say that we've started the Blai Bonet Year off on the right foot.