Marta Pessarrodona: "The only thing that scares me is Alzheimer's"

ValldoreixAlthough she has to walk with crutches due to a recent fall, Marta Pessarrodona (Terrassa, 1941) retains the energy and enthusiasm that have accompanied her for decades. She opens the door of her home in Valldoreix once again to ARA with a double motive: she has been chosen as the opening speaker for the new edition of the Barcelona Poesia festival, which takes place from May 14 to 21, and she is presenting a new book of poems, Re(visions), which is about to hit bookstores. Published by Viena five years after Tot m'admira (2021), it rescues the author's family members, friends, and loves, including her last dog, Queta, who died as a result of an accident just over a year ago.

After a brief visit to the studio where she works every morning on a new collection of poems and a highly anticipated book about Gabriel Ferrater, with whom she was a partner for four years, Pessarrodona invites us to sit in the garden to open the box of memories and relive them during an intense hour, sprinkled with unexpected revelations.

You describe poetry as "an absolute and radical jewel" in your opening speech for Barcelona Poesia.

— I really like that they asked me for this intervention. I will start by explaining that the first edition of Barcelona Poesia was held at the French High School, and that among those who participated were José Agustín Goytisolo, Jaime Gil de Biedma and Àlex Susanna.

Alex is one of the friends to whom you dedicate a poem in Re(visions).

— His illness and death deeply upset me. It reminded me of the cancer that took my friend Marià Vancells fifty years ago. I told both Marià and Àlex that they had to fight to get through it, but it was no use, the illness ran its relentless course. Àlex would have been an excellent Minister of Culture, he had a very broad range. But he was wasted.

In this same poem dedicated to Àlex Susanna you write: "Catalonia has very serious problems with its great figures".

— These words were told to me a long time ago by an editor from Destino who was not from here. "You have problems with the big figures", she warned me. And she was right. In Catalonia, you cannot be a big figure.

In the book you also write about Ricard Salvat.

— He made Catalan theatre travel abroad at a time when it didn't even go to Matadepera. He was a difficult man, yes. So what? He was very cultured. He did a great job. That's what counts. It makes me angry that he is not recognized enough.

We started at the end of Re(visions). If we rewind to the beginning, we find Letter to my father I never wrote. You have dedicated a poem to your father Florenci more than fifty years after his death, because you still remember and miss him.

— I bring him back to life a little. I reproach him for dying so soon. He was only 59 years old. I always say that dying is bad manners. My father was the most animal lover in the family. His name was Florenci, but unfortunately he didn't leave me any legacy, unlike the father of whom we know [Jordi Pujol]. My current dog, Florence, bears his name, but I named her in English, because what works with dogs are bisyllabic words.

Before Florence you had Queta. You also dedicate a poem to her, Natural Intelligence, which you wrote while watching her sleep. "I have taken many years / to see that animal, ultimately, / comes from the word soul", we read there.

— Queta's death made me very sad. She spent her last days in intensive care due to being run over right in front of the house. The motorcyclist couldn't have expected her to run out of here like lightning... I prefer not to think about it too much.

Dogs accompany you wherever you go.

— With a painter friend, Lluís Ribas, we are preparing a book about dogs. He portrays them and I write a small text that accompanies the images. A coincidence that brings us together is that we have both had dogs named Darling. The last German Shepherd named Darling, like the previous one, died not long ago. Mine was the first dog we had at home. My father named him Darling after some candies that were called that.

Do you remember when it was?

— I must have been two years old. It must have been, therefore, in 1943, in the midst of the post-war period. At that time I refused to eat. My father had been a Republican lieutenant and my mother came from a simple family. They despaired that I didn't want to eat. Then it occurred to me to tell them that if I had a puppy, I would eat. My father saw the opportunity to bring a dog home.

You say that having a dog extends your life thanks to the happiness the animal gives you every day.

— People who have a dog live at least two years longer. I, who have had a bunch of them since I was 2 years old, will live to be 200.

It is a difficult wish to fulfill, but we hope you live for many years.

— Whatever God wants. Forgive me for becoming Catholic on this issue, but it's something I can't choose. The only thing I fear is Alzheimer's. I have made an advance directive so that, if I were to get it, I want to be able to finish it.

I find this fear reasonable, considering that memory has a fundamental weight in everything you have written. To scare away the ghosts, you continue working every day.

— I get up very early and get to work. I have a new poetry collection almost finished, Geografies, but I'm not in a hurry to finish it.

Will some of the important places in your life come out here?

— Yes, clear.

In Re(visions) we find London, Berlin, Barcelona...

— I have fallen in love with people as much as with cities. I am decently married to London and have an adulterous love for Berlin.

And with Barcelona?

— It's my great city. It's the place where I imagined, since I was little, that all things happened. We used to come here with my mother. Even now, the escalators in Plaça Catalunya move me.

You left the city in the late 90s.

— Since 1999 I have lived here, in Valldoreix. But I still have the apartment in Barcelona, in Guinardó, where the niece of a friend of mine who is an architect is now staying. At the time I didn't want to buy it because I felt it tied me down too much. I wanted to move. I would have liked to settle in the United States, but it couldn't be. Then life changes everything for you.

In the poem L'important c'est d'aimer, dedicated to Guillermina Motta, you write: "We have lost our Barcelona together". What was that Barcelona like?

— The difference between London and Barcelona is that the former knows how to preserve the past, even if it is constantly transformed and renewed. Between the first time I went there, in 1967, and the last, which was in 2023, only one pub I used to go to has disappeared, the Jack Straw's Castle. They turned it into apartments. In Barcelona so many things have changed that I don't know where to start. La Punyalada, l'Oro del Rhin... now, more recently, l'Apeadero. I had studied at the Maragall institute and had worked at Seix Barral, which were very close by. I have been losing all my reference points. Only Set Portes and Giardinetto remain for me.

In Re(visions) there are several poems featuring Gabriel Ferrater, who was your partner between 1968 and 1972. You started the relationship the same year you debuted as an author with Primers dies de 1968.

— When Gabriel died, I made the decision that I would not mention him for 25 years. And I kept that promise. Then I dedicated an article to Serra d'Or that Jordi Sarsanedas, who was its director at the time, asked me for, and also a presentation that Margarida Aritzeta proposed to me for the Rovira i Virgili University.

You write: "When you left (...) I cursed you for lack of civility".

— I found him lifeless and was devastated, but I felt my pain was a misery compared to what his mother Amàlia would feel when I told her. I took care of it. I owed her. Amàlia was a very intelligent woman. We got along very well. I always told Gabriel that we should go to Reus to see her, but he found it very difficult.

You dedicate the poem Cobrefoc to him. Amàlia taught you that, "if we have loved, we can love again and again".

— With Amàlia I had very funny conversations. Sometimes she would call me at the publishing house and say: "Why are you with my son?". And I would reply that because I loved him. She would reply: "But, listen to me, he is much older than you. He has no money. He drinks a lot".

Gabriel ended up committing suicide shortly before turning 50.

— One afternoon, when I thought Reus surrealism was taking center stage, Gabriel said to Amàlia: "Mother, the wolves are already gnawing at my heels." He was announcing what would happen shortly after. Amàlia ended up doing the same as her son. When they say she fell from a skylight, they are insulting her intelligence.

Are you still working on the book about Ferrater?

— Yes. I have it quite advanced, but I find it difficult to write.

Why?

— Perhaps I waited too long to get started. The title will be So Good to Remember. And the subtitle, Four Years with Gabriel. It's the four years before his end.