Míriam Cano: "When you lose a friend, you lose a way of being in the world."

BarcelonaAfter publishing two collections of poems and several short stories, Míriam Cano (Molins de Rei, 1982) suffered from a creative block. Five years later, the poet and translator broke that literary silence with Metamorphosis (L'Avenç), an intimate chronicle of two trips she made to the Greek village of Metamorfosis, which transformed her from within. On the first, Cano is accompanied by two great friends, Borja and Julia, and Julia's daughter, a baby. On the second, the writer shares the stay with Julia and her mother, Nuri, who has just lost her husband. Through them, the book explores friendship and loss, while inviting us to take things one step at a time, enjoying simple pleasures—eating, talking, not overthinking—and accepting ourselves without fear.

This is the first time you've published a book of prose. What brought you here?

— I started publishing poetry because it was the language that most appealed to me at first, but I have always been a great reader of prose. After the story of They burn skies (LaBreu, 2017) I had a block. I was writing a novel, and suddenly I was really afraid I wouldn't be up to it. So I allowed myself to stop and start translating, which is what I've been doing most of the last few years. It was a very deliberate decision to stay in touch with my writing.

In the midst of all this, he traveled to Greece twice and a book came out of it.

— The first trip was just after the pandemic, in 2021. It was a time when I needed to get things together. I studied humanities and Greece has always been on my mind, but I'd never been. At the same time, there was this added bonus of going with Borja, Julia, and Simona, who was very young. When we returned, Núria Iceta [director of L'Avenç] told me I had to write it. I kept putting her off until I finally got around to it.

What image did you want to give of the corner of Greece that welcomed you, Metamorphosis?

— I was worried about creating a tourist portrait of Greece, especially for Nuri, because it's a place she loves very much. But that fear fades in the very nature of the trip, because it's not a tourist trip. When we're there, we take it very easy. We get up early, but we do our homework for three days. I would go out to get bread in a nightgown and pool slippers. It was a very peaceful life. The area isn't particularly idyllic either; it's a very wild place.

"Even in the most terrible moments, my true friends have always made me laugh," she writes. Why did she want to talk about friendship?

— Because I'm very interested. Marina Garcés's book talking, The passion of strangers, and also Bad companyFriendship is taken for granted; it's been little theorized about, and very little discussed. There's no word to define someone who doesn't have friends. Nor are there rules. When you reach adulthood, you start looking back and looking at the stage of life ahead of you. And then you see the people you'll grow old with. They're not simply party friends, but those who are there through thick and thin. Right now, society is so precarious that our way of sustaining ourselves depends on friends. I don't know if I really believe in this idea that friends are family, because family already has its conditions and rules. I like to believe that friends go in a different direction, but that the bond is constant.

In the second part, however, he talks about loneliness.

— There's a form of loneliness that, when it strikes, lives inside us. I'm referring, for example, to the grief after a breakup, even a breakup with friends, which I think is rarely discussed and can be just as hard as with a partner. You lose a lot of things: a shared language, a way of being in the world. So that loneliness is already within you. It doesn't matter how many people you're surrounded by, if you feel the grief. Then I also wanted to talk about logistical loneliness: when you're alone, there are times when you can't choose whether you want to have a more or less peaceful life in a place like Barcelona. Loneliness is a choice that involves taking on a rental on your own, and if your boiler needs repairs or your refrigerator breaks down, all these arrangements fall on you. When you have someone by your side, all of this is much easier.

How have you worked on the language of the book?

— Faced with this purism of the language that seeks to make it difficult, my decision as a translator is to create a very grounded language and recover genuine words. I don't want to use a frozen Catalan. The Catalan in the book is my everyday Catalan. The most complicated words won't make a language more alive just because they're complicated. I've worked to make Catalan genuine, beautiful, and homegrown.

Her trips to Greece also led her to reflect on how writing and publishing are, in a way, exposing one's own vulnerability. How does she cope?

— I've never stopped writing, but I was very afraid of publishing because of the exposure it entails. This is a small book that has a lot to do with change, with accepting who I am without shame and writing it. When you've read a lot, it's very scary to write because you think you'll never reach the level you love. But now I think each book will get a little better, at least for me, and that's what I'll keep doing. I asked myself: If I knew I shouldn't publish anymore, would I keep writing? The answer is yes. My way of looking at the world is deeply connected to storytelling. This thought may seem very simple, but it left me very calm.

He could have disguised it as fiction, but he decided not to.

— I thought it was interesting to write a book where I showed myself vulnerable. There's this kind of legend around writers that we always seem to be okay. On Instagram, there's a hashtag, #writingmynovel, with images of people with Moleskines, MacBooks, a glass of wine, and a sunset: they're doing anything else, but writing a novel, certainly not. Something serious.

The latest news from the Catalan publishing world has been the absorption of Periscope by Group 62As someone who's experienced it from the inside, how do you see the sector?

— I think there are cycles and that social media amplifies everything. Periscopio and many other publishing houses are companies that look out for the good of their employees. We must also not forget that at Grupo 62 there are magnificent people who do very good work. I'm concerned about this constant alarmism over anything without waiting for results. If Periscopio, or any other publishing house, does things wrong, then it will be time to be critical. We should give them a chance and wait to see what happens, not immediately take action. If you've trusted a publishing house that has published your favorite books, why shouldn't they continue to do so?