"I felt misunderstood and needed to meet people who thought and felt like me."

Barcelona"As a teenager, you're alone with your friends and the poems in your pocket that you don't show to anyone... for your own good." Joan Deusa, winner of this year's Jocs Florals de Barcelona with the poetry collection Ithaca devastated, doesn't attribute his best summer memory to childhood but to adulthood. It goes back only four years, to 2021, but he's sure that it will still be his best summer when he turns fifty. This story begins when, together with his friends, Juma Barratxina and Manu C. Girón, they get into a 1994 Nissan and hit the road in a kind of roadmovie ispost-pandemic sting to shoot a film about the lives of seven poets, which would be the third volume of his project Revista Poetry Spam (and which could be seen this year at the Poesía y + festival). This is how a man from Gandía, a man from Matadepera, and a man from Cádiz embark on a poetic and geographical journey through the Catalan countries: from Gandía to Alfafara and on to Valencia; and from Valencia to Valls, Hospitalet de Llobregat, San Juan de las Abadesas, and, finally, Llucmajor, in Mallorca.

But let's recap: why, with a minimal budget thanks to a Verkami that barely covered the technical equipment, did Deusa and his friends get involved (or as he would say, call each other) to film poets, most of whom hadn't published anything—although many of them are now emerging? "If I selected this summer as the happiest, perhaps the reason was just that: to be happy," says Deusa. That boy with the poems in his pocket thus found the poetic summer he longed for: "I felt misunderstood and needed to meet people who thought and felt like me." The three protagonists built an idyllic relationship. With Barratxina, Deusa says they are "a perfect couple," and Girón always explains that, despite having lived in Barcelona, that trip made him truly grasp the dialectal dimensions of Catalan.

During the trip, there is a climactic moment. On the last day of filming, a poet friend had organized a party at his house in the middle of the Mallorcan countryside. It was over. Remember, at that moment I was undeniably happy." The poet reclaims the famous Mediterranean slogan and jokes: "It's not my fault Estrella Damm took those images.