<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - poetry]]> 10 <![CDATA[Rare earths]]> After eleven years of editorial silence – which in reality does not mean the poet has been quiet, as he himself makes clear in the magnificent prologue that serves as an introduction, since in reality all this time he has been brewing the event, waiting for the best moment and preparing for the explosion just like a good hunter – Emili Sánchez-Rubio publishes a new poetry book: Terres rares in the delightful collection La Fosca by Lleonard Muntaner, Editor. I want to say it right away: it is a colossal, visionary, prodigious work that confirms the author as one of the best of his generation. Therefore, we are faced with a return to the very top, an authentic renaissance, a resurgence that deserves all our attention and passion. Reading these pages illuminated by extreme wisdom, I have re-membered, returned things to the heart, according to the centennial Blai Bonet, how much the lyrical proposal of this prophet born in Ciutat de Mal in 1983 has always made me hallucinate, who has been a Necromancer and who now returns as an Alchemist or, even better, a Presocratic of the Future, an Oracular Scientist.Rare earths, as the title itself indicates, takes its name and atomic number from these elements that are very difficult to obtain and so poetic to, from their unfolding like a catalog of untamed matters in the style of Bartomeu Fiol, build the structure of the volume, which advances as we delve into the strange and precious fusion of entity and soul, of corpora and spirit. Recognizing chaos (in fact, the pages of this book are full of brutal oxymorons and paradoxes and contradictions) to unravel the cosmos, Emili Sánchez-Rubio shines in a verbal and philosophical way like Miquel Bauçà; as Andreu Vidal investigates the darkness to reach the conclusion that “in the Obscure, / all things are white”; he builds a foundational theory of Love following the example of the admired Robert Graves and secretes impossible images and real scenes, because in fact every poem is a legacy or a statement of incontinence, like the best disciple of the master and friend Emilio Arnao and achieves mystical genius that touches upon daily ardor and the epiphytic discovery of pure revelation: “The speed of light / is what it is / because it flees from Time.”Longer poems are combined with more synthetic poems in perfect balance, a brilliant cosmic balance that confirms the gifts of a brilliant and eloquent poet. The fascinating result, a pure fireball in the purest style of Bartomeu Rosselló-Pòrcel of our era, is an admirable cosmogonic theory that returns poetry to its place as an exceptional vehicle of visionary knowledge and seals it through a messianic expression. ‘Terres rares’, by Emili Sánchez-Rubio, is, and I say this without doubts or regrets, a sublime book in every sense.

]]> <![CDATA[The gifted intelligence of flowers]]> “Humanity, almost all of it, has lost its natural value” is one of the many and valuable sentences that conceptually flood, and with all the reason and urgency in the world, Laia Malo’s newly released and exceptional poetry collection: Rum-rum in the prestigious Jardins de Samarcanda collection of the Cafè Central label. I say it is exceptional because it truly is: the author takes a brutal leap forward in her career and gives us her best book, a volume sedimented and nourished by each and every one of the poet's multiple tasks, since in addition to being a translator from English and Russian, Malo also translates other languages of the globe, especially those of the fascinating universes of insects, so that we may understand and grasp other realities beyond the surfaces of things. Alongside necessary denunciations like those already mentioned, there is, at the same time and at every happy moment, a firm sentiment of hope: the unrenounceable illusion that a change is still possible that leads to a new global consciousness of an essential return to the natural environment. In fact, the poet, more ambitious than ever, invites a re-foundation of all Culture in the face of Nature: “In the beginning was the Green.” And no, it is not just a dazzling verbal finding, it is the renewing spirit of a magnificent book built from prodigious political biopoems, not the first in Catalan literature but undoubtedly the best so far.We had already been able to hear and read just complaints like these thanks to the expanded work of Laia Malo with her expanded writings: as a member of the increasingly recognized electroverse duo Jansky and as the person responsible for very well-crafted periodic articles in ARA Balears. But it is true that it is the first time that these other literary formats nourish her verses and her poems. The result is a book of colossal dynamism, both structural and mental. With Rum-rum we witness a transformation as huge as the one that Blai Bonet brought about when he left behind the models of the Escola Mallorquina, and it is that Laia Malo takes a leap and surpasses the current paradigms of representing in words the biological environments that surround us, since they are not scenarios, they are not wild spaces that escape our absurd civilizing desire, they are complete macrocosms that we do not take into account enough, and this is our tragedy, our uprooting. Rum-rum is a novel, wildly vital song, a new gospel that sings of the gifted intelligence of flowers and blossoms with tongues of exuberant, super-fertile libido.Rum-rum, by Laia Malo, does not reproduce the music of the spheres, it captures the rhythms and melodies of the planet and posits itself as a proof of faith that drives us to believe that people still have time to become human beings again.

]]> <![CDATA["Poetry is the opportunity to use words in another way"]]>

Born in Sant Joan in 1998, Júlia Febrer Bausà is part of this new generation of voices that approach poetry with their own perspective, made of word, image, and matter. Her name has begun to resonate strongly within the literary landscape after winning the Ciutat de Manacor de Poesia Miquel Àngel Riera 2025 prize with Arrel inoïda, a work that confirms the solidity of an author still young, but with an already well-defined poetic universe. This recognition has been joined this year by the Martí Dot de Poesia prize, organized by the Sant Feliu de Llobregat City Council, for the poetry collection Llum de cendra, which will be published in the autumn.

]]> <![CDATA[Difficult it is]]> It has been a long time since Edicions Poncianes published anything new, which is why it has been a joy that this very special label has brought to light a most interesting volume: Difàcil, the new title by Manel Ollé, a professor of Chinese History and Culture at Pompeu Fabra University, translator, critic, and, above all, a poet of outstanding career who has deserved prestigious awards such as the Ciutat de Palma Joan Alcover de Poesia prize with Mirall negre, the Sant Cugat Poetry prize in memory of Gabriel Ferrater with Bratislava o Bucarest and the Jocs Florals de Barcelona prize with Un grapat de pedres d’aigua, among others.Difàcil continues the integrative line of different textualities within the framework of the page, that is, it is certainly a book of poems, but these are presented through different modalities. On the one hand, prose poems that combine with verses that are either free or presented with various metric resources: haikus, haibuns, decasyllables… Each proposal has, of course, a different breath, a detail that contributes to the richness of resources. Furthermore, there are different themes and registers: pages that delve into "the palace of memory" (with a multitude of trips around the globe, even excursions to curious corners like those in the film Léolo, by Jean-Claude Lanzon), streams that seem like dreams or surreal scenes (which function as independent stories that could have been included without any hesitation in Combats singulars. Antologia del conte català contemporani edited by Ollé himself), texts that delve into the impossibility of faithful representation through the insistence of the letter… Regarding this field, in his film La Chinoise, Jean-Luc Godard has the politicized characters say that "art is not a reflection of reality, but the reality of the reflection," and some fragments of Difàcil seem to arrive at this same conclusion, especially those that reflect on the natural idiosyncrasy of any copy (one of the themes that Manel Ollé dealt with in the book Plagia millor!) or rewriting, and here the author establishes fruitful dialogues with illustrious rewriters such as Josep Carner, Miquel Bauçà and Josep Palàcios. Two more arts can be linked to Difàcil: architecture and music. Regarding the former, Manel Woodcutter Song's illustrations seem like psychogeographic maps that trace the increasingly complex and labyrinthine journey of the pages as they progress. Regarding the latter, various artists like John Cage are mentioned not in vain: let's recall what Cage said about silence being impossible, there is always the background hum of our body, an idea that hovers over the spirit of a book born from a telephone spark and a creative flare that grows and expands from rereads and rewrites.

]]> <![CDATA[Ready for a grand journey?]]> Who dares to claim that Catalan literature is in decline? I can only see an increasingly ambitious, increasingly powerful creativity. In recent years, more voices, more styles, more generations have coexisted than ever before, as well as more proposals than in our entire history. Given this, I declare that it is evident that we do have State structures: publishing in Catalan, translation into Catalan, and literature in Catalan are undoubtedly so. Because there are books that contain, within themselves, countries and utopias. This is the sensation I have had reading recent epic epics that capture the essence of our chaotic and exciting world such as Cor pirinenc, by Lluís Calvo (Lleonard Muntaner, Editor, Jacint Verdaguer Prize); Arnau, by Adrià Targa (Editorial Proa, Critics' Prize), and El Periple, by Damià Rotger Miró (Galés Edicions, Mallorca Poetry Prize 2025).

]]> <![CDATA[Suck my autonomy]]> In the interviews that Mahmud Darwish gives in the beautiful volume La Palestina com a metàfora (Lleonard Muntaner, Editor), the Palestinian poet delves into crucial themes, such as the idea of permanent exile and the breakdown of History due to the fragility of the links of transmission –an idea that Lluís Calvo analyzes in the magnificent essay Els llegats (Arcàdia) – and also into the fact that the body has become the last bulwark, the last refuge, the definitive weapon with which to continue the fight in these times of chaos. I would dare to say that this is one of the keys to understanding the proliferation and exaltation of corporeal poetics and morbid poetry, essential trends in 21st-century Catalan poetry in a movement of forces that markedly opposes a recalcitrant neo-formalism that returns to meter and rhyme as foundations for verse writing. I thought of all this while reading, and enjoying, El cant de les cigales, the newest and most brutal title by the Llucmajor poet Cecília Navarro, a work more than worthy of the 43rd Manuel Rodríguez Martínez Ciutat d’Alcoi Poetry Prize.

]]> <![CDATA[Triptych landed (II): The roses]]>

Keeping your feet on the ground is terrifying. It's scary because reality is a present with over forty wars, on a planet where 1% of humans accumulate almost half of the economic wealth, and in a country where only 1% of the population reads poetry. Nevertheless, gravity compels us to do so. Hopping on tiptoes or on one foot, with one leg in the air, and pretending it's all by chance or the will of gods we don't believe in, we can achieve the illusion of flight. It is in contact with the Earth's crust, where 40% of insect species are already endangered, that we will find a kind of immaterial and intangible reward: grounded and connected, we will feel part of something that has the possibility of moving.

]]> <![CDATA["Female desire is very dirty, but nobody has the balls to say it"]]>

“I write to you / because I seek you. / And because I want to kill you”. “They are mistaken: / darkness hides nothing. / It makes everything shine”. “I will tear out my eyes / so as not to see / that you are looking”. These are just three of the fragments with which the journalist and collaborator of l’ARA Balears Clàudia Darder (sa Pobla, 1994) debuts as a poet with Com una cussa (Adia Edicions), a poetry book with which she was a finalist for the Salvador Iborra award. In one of the epilogues, the poet Joan Tomàs Martínez Grimalt defines it as “a piece of hot meat that still beats”.

]]> <![CDATA["Poetry is useless and necessary in this system of war"]]>

The exoskeleton is not the title of a zoology book. Or is it. It is the title of Jèssica Ferrer's latest poetry collection, a work that won the Maria Mercè Marçal prize and has just arrived in bookstores. In her first book, Som aquí, Ferrer described massacres from the pig's point of view; now, in an exercise that lies between entomology and metaphysics, she speaks of the limits of the 'I' and the 'we' using the exoskeleton as a metaphor; the exoskeleton is the external skeleton found, for example, in ants. Between Som aquí (2022) and L’exoesquelet (2026), Ferrer has also had time to publish Fissures (2023), which constitutes one of the most dazzling careers in Catalan poetry in recent times. Jèssica Ferrer was born in Ibiza in 1993; in addition to writing, performing with Ses Honorables Virtuts Il·lògiques, and promoting the publication of Revista 078, in the summer she cultivates the garden and collects carob beans.

]]> <![CDATA["Poetry does not spare you any pain"]]>

A 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.

]]> <![CDATA['Trast', the bravest cry of Biel Mesquida]]> With Trast, fresh from the oven of the LaBreu Edicions factory on a twentieth anniversary that is achieving a lot of recognition, Biel Mesquida signs one of the most abundant and necessary books of his career, a poetic work that arrives at the right moment: after the well-deserved recognition of the Premi d’Honor de les Lletres Catalanes, but also in a sociological and political period of great global turbulence, with a disastrous return to far-right tendencies that should concern us much more. Trast is a manifesto, a fiery textual proposal that explodes in our faces to remind us that the voice of this pan-Catalan creator is fundamental because it builds foundations and, moreover, is in full catalytic combustion, in furious carnage. This new volume made of exalted verses is an explosion of lucid rage and vindicatory energy that grants no respite: a long and torrential poem fragmented into eight songs that arises from an almost physical urgency and unfolds just like a proud fountain that does not stop flowing, faithful to the propulsive impulse. Here, cruel beauty is not an escape but a sacred place from which demands for radical justice are raised, spoken with all names and all scars, both those of the body and those of the spirit. Biel Mesquida establishes a tense and vibrant dialogue with the maladjustments of History. Perceptive consciousness, always finely tuned, is traversed by the injustices that bleed, both inherited and current, as if the (in)civil war of '36 had not fully closed. In this sense, Trast is a polyphony of rebellion but also of revelation: the title itself condenses a devastating diagnosis of the present, of an island landscape turned into residue, of a massacred time in which territory, language, and custom seem to dissolve under the weight of material and symbolic perversions. And yet, far from any apocalyptic temptation, Mesquida's poetry does not resign itself; it dares to continue radiating linguistic powers that reactivate sensibilities and shake memories until they are once again incisive, critical, alive. In this quintessential volume there is a reckless density, a defined personality that refuses to be closed off, baring itself completely: each verse is written at the limit, with an intensity that invites reading with all senses open. In dialogue with major pieces of his work such as the poem 'Sgt. Pepper Wants You: Auca', the mosaic that is Trast resumes and multiplies the ability to converge epic and barbarism, culture and experience, collage and chant in a flow that is both tradition and postmodernity. The result is an extraordinary artifact that gallops between centuries and registers, and that confirms Biel Mesquida as an essential creator: a writer who writes and transforms language into a force capable of resisting, denouncing, and dreaming.

]]> <![CDATA[Inca pays tribute to Blai Bonet with an edition of the Poetry Festival that fuses verses and electronic music]]>

Inca will once again become a center of poetry in the coming weeks with the new edition of the Poetry Festival, which kicks off on March 20th in the cloister of Sant Domingo. The City Council has presented a program with a clear interdisciplinary focus, in which verses are combined with electronic music and visual arts to create unique poetic experiences.

]]> <![CDATA[Restitution of Joan Alcover]]> In the context of the centenary of the death of the poet Joan Alcover, one of the key anniversaries of 2026 along with the Clementina Arderiu Year and the Blai Bonet Year, Edicions 62 is releasing the complete and critical edition of his Poems Edited by Ignasi Moreta, who traces the circumstances of the texts' composition, offers a useful critical interpretation, provides metrical and rhythmic details, and, to top off a continuous masterclass, comments on possible variations in previous editions. What a compendium! We are faced with a fundamental, extremely important work that establishes, organizes, clarifies, structures, and brings together, as never before, the corpus of Alcover's Catalan-language production.

]]> <![CDATA[I no longer have wings, but my angel still believes in me]]> I discovered the poet Ramon Guillem thanks to the songs that singer-songwriter Miquel Gil had created based on some of the most emblematic texts of the author from Catarroja. From then on, I read him avidly and was even lucky enough to meet him—and I say "lucky" because he was an exceptional human being. Our first in-person meeting was, in fact, in Llucmajor during the Cavall Verd awards ceremony organized by Miquel Bezares and dedicated to Maria Antònia Salvà. Laughing, I told him about the anthology of young poets we were preparing at the time. FirestoneAnd his face turned one of the palest whites I've ever seen before he told me that was the title he'd thought of for the book of poems he was writing. He had to change it, but it was for the better, since his book ended up being called Abyss and bird, as a tribute to the composer Olivier Messiaen and the very famous movement "Abîme des oiseaux" of the Quartet pour el fin takes time.

]]> <![CDATA[Sex, pinching each other like crabs sucking each other]]> Poem of Desire It is an epic poem that assumes, from the outset, a lofty philosophical and poetic ambition. Rosa Font Massot shapes her new work from a theoretical framework she herself articulates: a dialogue with Baruch Spinoza and Simone Weil. From the former, she takes the idea that the essence of humankind is desire. From the latter, the intuition that desire projects humankind toward the absolute and the limitless. These two pillars of thought underpin a literary investigation that understands desire not only as an erotic impulse but also as thought, language, and the power of ontological projection. The work constructs a literary space in which desire is not confined to the relationship between bodies; it expands until it merges with the world: desire is a fusion with nature, with what is perceived, and with what we are. This expansion transforms the experience of desire into a way of knowing, speaking, and inhabiting reality. The body is not only pure desiring matter; it is also a fascinating cognitive vehicle.

]]> <![CDATA[A naked man jumps into the void]]> If last week I praised an essay that invites you to fly (The winged ones (by Elisabet Riera, published by Males Herbes), today I will celebrate a poetry collection that invites us to delve into the exultation of blue. It is aboutThe diver Ricard Martínez Pinyol's book, published by LaBreu Edicions, is a volume in which each composition is a sonic artifact, a piece of verbal ingenuity where the word not only signifies but also resonates, reverberates, and intertwines with the others as if weaving an organic web. The poet writes with an almost sculptural awareness of language, working the balance between rhythm and emotion, between the inner pulse of the verse and the idea that runs through it. The page becomes a living space, a small ecosystem where the ink doesn't drip uselessly but flows, and where the text's internal music sustains a precise yet not rigid architecture. This desire to create a sonic and physical experience places the reader on the aquatic stage of the verses not as a spectator, but as a body propelled by a current, listening to its ripples and perceiving, in a Greco-Latin way, its pressure, sensual and dangerous.

]]> <![CDATA[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.

]]> <![CDATA[Let's raise our glasses!]]> The neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer defined human beings as symbolic animals, that is, creatures who enjoy creating symbols, playing with metaphors, and celebrating rituals of all kinds. Activities like these strengthen bonds and help build individual and collective memories. Around these tribal foundations also orbit commemorative dates: specific dates we remember for different reasons, all valid for maintaining the fabric of community. For example, we give a sense of completion to the centenaries of the birth of prominent figures—in fact, as is well known, this year we celebrate the Year of Llompart and 2026 will be the Year of Blai Bonet—but we also hold significant events around round numbers, which we find more appealing, as they say, let's forget that everything is a convention…

]]> <![CDATA[The power and glory of Antònia Arbona]]> The philologist, writer and translator Antònia Arbona publishes her sixteenth book of poems at Documenta Balear, Power and gloryA sophisticated meta-literary epic that engages with Catalan icons (the clear presence of Josep M. Llompart and Blai Bonet is essential) and universal writers (William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, Paul Celan, Graham Greene). It is accompanied by some twenty paratexts, including prologues, epilogues, and commentaries by Pere Perelló i Nomdedéu, M. Magdalena Gelabert i Miró, Sebastià Bennasar Llobera, Gabriel Janer Manila, Pep Siset, Nicolás Dols, Miguel Cardell, Cristina Álva Sureda, and Martí. The cover illustration is by Israel Clarà.

]]> <![CDATA[Seraphim and zombies]]> Through the pages of his new poetry volume, Posthuman joysAnna Pantinat unfolds a lyrical investigation that takes the founding of the Monastery of Saint Peter of Casserres as its starting point, delving into a much more ambitious exploration. The work eschews any temptation of historical fiction or recreation of the past, becoming instead an inquiry into the foundations of desire and domination. Pantinat revisits the founding narrative of a sacred space to uncover the tensions that have sustained it: blood, genealogy, faith, and the word as instruments of control. Behind silent stone walls, and amidst the wonders expressed in stories written in lowercase and History written in uppercase, a system of human relations trembles, permeated by hierarchy, predation, and the need to impose dogmas.

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