The first thing that comes to my mind after reading this eloquent 800-page volume is a question: how is it that the lyrical work of Segimon Serrallonga (Torelló, 1930 - Badalona, 2002) has lived hidden for so long? We knew, of course, some of his accomplishments, but the majority of these poems remained to be discovered. The impression that the work now produces on us is staggering, although it is true that it contains pieces of extremely high lyricism and others of intention –though not of writing– that are rather more rugged.

For every award received Sala Augusta followed by Mother Tongue, the latest book by Sebastià Alzamora (Llucmajor, 1972), the Majorcan author has not stopped wondering about the reasons that had made it possible. "I think about it constantly, but I cannot quite explain it to myself," he admits with a smile, surrounded by the jury of the Lletra d'Or prize, one of the most veteran in the Catalan literary sector. It is the fifth recognition for a published work that Sala Augusta has received since Edicions Proa released it in May 2025. First came the Critics' Prize from the Spanish Association of Literary Critics. A few months later, it won the Josep Maria Llompart Prize, awarded by the Association of Catalan Language Writers of the Balearic Islands. It was followed by the Crítica Serra d'Or Prize for poetry and, weeks before the Lletra d'Or, was awarded the National Poetry Prize "for his ability to move, with identical brilliance, from the impassioned language of historical denunciation to the delicacy of the domestic space".

There is consternation among readers and writers in the Catalan language over the death, a few days ago, of Jaume Pont, one of the most prominent poets of his generation. Pont was born in 1947, like Josep Piera, another of the great poets in the Catalan language of the last decades: because of these two deaths, it is appropriate to think of 2026 as a disastrous year. A beautiful photo circulates on social media in which both appear, Piera and Pont, at the former's house in La Drova, about to embrace, happy to enjoy the pleasure of true friendship. They were masters in the art of writing verses and in the art of living, and they made this clear, without even setting out to do so, in everything they did. Their condition as “peripheral” (Jaume Pont was from Lleida and Josep Piera from Beniopa, in the very fertile region of La Safor) was not just a fact about their respective places of birth: poetry, high poetry, is always a peripheral matter, and this does not mean that it does not interest anyone (quite the contrary: it interests a multitude, it interests the crowds) but rather that it is not monetized, it is not venal, it is not exchanged in euros or dollars, and, for that reason, those who need to quantify everything and put a price on everything find it suspicious.

Four of the pillars of the poetry of Jaume Pont i Ibáñez (Lleida, 1947-2026) have been love, madness, chance, and death. Having died this Thursday at the age of 79, Pont, who held a degree in philosophy and letters, made a name for himself with Límit(s) in 1976, published by the emblematic Llibres del Mall, and not long after he founded and directed the influential magazine Quaderns de Ponent (1979-1983), which helped to disseminate and critically value the work of creators from the Terres de Lleida such as Maria-Mercè Marçal,, Josep Maria Sala-Valldaura, and Pere Rovira.

This Monday, September 21, at 6 p.m., ARA culture journalist Jordi Nopca will interview the writer and ARA columnist Sebastià Alzamora (Llucmajor, 1972) live, who has been awarded the National Poetry Prize, granted by the Ministry of Culture. The jury has chosen his work Sala Augusta followed by Llengua materna (Proa, 2025) for "its ability to transition, with identical genius, from the impassioned language of historical denunciation to the delicacy of the domestic space".

The writer Pere Pena (Seròs, 1962) was investigating a few years ago the death of his great-uncle during the Civil War when he came across the disappearance of a teacher from Seròs, Candelària Ametlla. From that mystery, Pena began to craft the story of his first novel, Sota la pell, un arbre (Eclecta), which reconstructs Candelària's life by mixing reality and fiction. The author begins with his sentimental awakening to link the teacher's figure with Rita, a French girl who spent her summers in the village. He does this through interviews with war witnesses and relatives of exiles, in a polyhedral narrative that is also made up of his thoughts to end up drawing a literary mosaic of the collective memory of a village.

"Clementina Arderiu Voltas is surely one of the Catalan writers who has had the easiest and most difficult time leaving a work in the history of Catalan literature". With this forceful statement begins the profile that Marta Pessarrodona outlined the poet in the volume Donasses. Protagonists of modern Catalonia (Destination, 2006). Now that the fiftieth anniversary of Arderiu's death is being celebrated, it is worth asking what the reasons are for this contradictory situation – in the light and in the shadow at the same time – and trying to correct the wrong that has been done to his work, on which reductive judgments have weighed, for social and biographical reasons.

Perhaps because he won the last Jocs Florals prize with the book Descripció del món (Godall), Martí Sales (Barcelona, 1979) meets us in the garden of the Muñoz Ramonet Foundation, an oasis of trees, plants, and sculptural fountains that opened to the public ten years ago. A poet, narrator, translator, and singer – he was part of the fondly remembered Surfing Sirles – Sales received the prestigious award at the Saló de Cent of Barcelona City Council, where he took the opportunity to hand out leaflets to attendees in case they wanted to collaborate financially "with the struggle of the Vallcarca neighborhood against gentrification" and so that some residents could "wipe out the disproportionate fines from the police persecution to which the current council subjects them, while saying that the most important axis of its program is the right to housing".

To show, of Paul Éluard (1895-1952), is a collection of prose poems, lectures, writings on art, and texts dedicated to his painter friends. Published in 1939, the title summarizes Éluard's aesthetic project: poetry should not describe the world, but reveal and transform it. The poet is not a passive observer, but someone capable of penetrating appearances and discovering hidden relationships between objects, beings, and feelings. Linked to the surrealism ofAndré Breton, Éluard evolves here towards a more human and communicative poetry. To show is a borderland work between dream and reality, between image and idea, between amorous intimacy and collective consciousness.The central theme is the gaze. For Éluard, to see is not just to perceive, but to understand. He reorganizes reality with unexpected associations, surprising metaphors, and free images. Everyday objects acquire a new symbolic force, and the boundaries between matter and emotion dissolve. Poetry regains the capacity to marvel and suggests that only those who know how to look poetically are truly free. This principle also structures the book: there is no linear narrative, but fragments guided by intuitions and sudden illuminations. An almost hypnotic fluidity

Writing is based on free surrealist association, but Éluard adds more lyricism to it than other authors of the movement. His metaphors do not seek hermeticism, but an immediate emotional truth. From this is born the extraordinary musicality of his poetry. The rhythm, repetitions, and sound variations create an almost hypnotic fluidity, as if dictated by an inner current deeper than ordinary logic. The language is both simple and mysterious. Love occupies a central place and becomes a force of universal transformation. The feminine figure acts as a mediator between the poet and the world: she is not only an object of desire, but also a revealing presence. Body, nature, light, and time merge into a deeper reality. The boundaries between subject and object disappear. Despite the lyrical dimension, the book reflects an ethical and political concern. In the European context of the 1930s, marked by fascism and the imminence of war, Éluard defends the freedom of the spirit and human dignity. Poetic freedom becomes a model for moral and political freedom. Éluard represents a point of balance between aesthetic experimentation and historical responsibility.Friend of painters like Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, or Man Ray, Éluard creates poems that function as verbal paintings, full of light, visual contrasts, and spatial forms. Éluard participates in the avant-garde search for a language capable of overcoming traditional divisions between artistic disciplines. Showing is essential to understanding Éluard and modern European poetry. The book remains alive because it raises questions about the gaze, the power of words, and the role of poetry in times of crisis. Éluard is clear: poetry is not an ornament or an escape, but a way to defend human freedom against everything that tries to diminish it.

Up to now, and for almost thirty years, we have known Josep Pedrals (Barcelona, 1979) as a poet, a performer, a lecturer, and a cultural manager. With Poeticismes (Arcàdia, 2026), he debuts as an essayist with the same combination of pleasantness, erudition, and humor that abounds in his verses. In the catch-all drawer that is Pedrals' new book, we find reflections on emperors buried in honey or on the monument to Jacint Verdaguer on Passeig de Sant Joan, chronicles of some of the thousands of recitals in which he has participated around the world —like the one that took him to Macedonia accompanied by Adam Zagajewski—, vindications of authors less known to readers than they should be, and a wealth of curious technical speculations on poetry writing, one of his great passions, along with omnivorous reading and a love for the stage.

88 years ago, the citizens of Barcelona and other Catalan towns looked at the sky with terror. "The terrible hecatomb that punishes Barcelona continues. A couple of thousand victims and more than a hundred buildings destroyed in two days. Panic and horror. Let's all go to Vallirana. The scenes of exodus and sheltering witnessed at the metro stations and platforms are unforgettable," wrote Josep M. López-Picó on March 18, 1938. On Saturday, June 20, however, one will be able to look at the sky with optimism: 100,000 poems will fall. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Franco's death, a helicopter will fly over Plaça Nova and the surroundings of Barcelona Cathedral to drop verses, in Catalan and Spanish, especially from emerging poets.

For decades, Biel Mesquida (Castelló de la Plana, 1947) has been inviting readers to delve into all the nuances of the "censored perfume" of freedom, whether sexual or political. On the evening he received the 58th Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes, the verses of Lluita de classes, one of the agile and radiant poems from El bell país on els homes desitgen els homes –written in 1974 but unpublished until 1985–, once again resonated at the Palau de la Música with the elegant diction of the poet Adrià Targa. "You are a creature, fierce creature, playing with my hips, / biting them, while I knelt, pushed and compelled by your frenzy and / this desire to sink into the beautiful hole of my anus": thus, the urgent connection between the lyrical self and the "disheveled boy" of the commissions still sounds forcefully, an oasis of free love amidst the national-Catholic and Francoist darkness.

This book —which takes its title from a poem by Joan Vinyoli, a friend of Feliu Formosa— discreetly, yet profoundly, celebrates life. Although it reflects on death and absence, on loss and pain, life weighs more heavily. The poet manages the emotion with which he presents each of the pretexts used to elucidate the theme very well. “Love, desire and dream”, begins poem XXIV, which deals with a love affair. At ninety years old, existence becomes more peremptory than ever, but, as many verses demonstrate, also fully in love. “I never know if I say everything”: one never finishes saying everything, but here Formosa says many things (and, when he doesn't, he suggests them). Memories, desires, impressions. And he inventories many ideas. A very suggestive one is that “to live is to translate / and to translate is to live”.

Although she has to use 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 to her home in Valldoreix once again to ARA for a double reason: 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 poetry book, Re(visions), which is about to hit bookstores. Published by Viena five years after Tot m'admira (2021), it revisits the author's family members, friends, and loves, including her last dog, Queta, who died in an accident just over a year ago.

It has been twenty years since Jordi Llavina (Gelida, 1968) debuted as a poet with La corda del gronxador (Moll, 2006). The author celebrates the anniversary by selecting his work in verse in El test de la flor malva, published by Pagès: the volume, 200 pages long and with a prologue by Pere Ballart, collects a representative sample of the ten poetry books he has published so far, including Vetlla (3i4, 2012), El magraner (Cossetània, 2020) and Un llum que crema (Proa, 2023).

The definitive impulse to start writing, a self-confidence therapy, the stimulus to tell that story that is kept in a corner of the soul or a creative activity for an active retirement. The students of the Vicenç Pagès Jordà Writing Room of the Girona City Council are as diverse and heterogeneous as the motivations that have led them to want to write. But all of them, despite their different origins, ages or abilities, are touched by the same passion for writing. And for reading! Since the founder of the school, the late writer from Figueres Vicenç Pagès, did not conceive of one activity without the other.

I read, with a mixture of astonishment and disbelief, a study that claimed that many people prefer artificial intelligence-generated poetry because they find it more pleasant, clear, and emotive than human poetry. Researchers Brian Porter and Édouard Machery argued in Scientific Reports that, for many readers, these texts even surpassed those of Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, or Emily Dickinson.

The Colombian filmmaker Simón Mesa Soto (Medellín, 1986) won the Palme d'Or for best short film at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival with the final project for the master's degree he was pursuing at the London Film School, where Carla Simón was one of his classmates. A decade later, difficulties in making his second film brought about doubts and fear. What if his initial success had been a mirage? Would he end up being just a professor, having been forced to abandon his dream of filmmaking? These concerns ended up being reflected in A Poet, a hilarious yet very bitter comedy that premieres this Friday and features a wonderful protagonist: Óscar Restrepo, a poet who won an important award at a very young age and who, now older and a failure, wallows in his life's defeat through alcohol and self-pity, lives off the pension of an elderly, ill mother, and uses his literary aspirations (“I am a poet!”) as a trench to shield himself from work. “What you are is an idler,” his sister rightly tells him, pushing him to accept a job as a literature teacher.

The concern for what can (still) be said is at the heart of this beautiful book, winner of the latest edition of the Carles Riba prize –the first held on a new date–. Let's look at the poem that opens the proceedings, Picking Cherries. The pretext, like most of the pretexts in the poetry of Jaume Coll Mariné (how welcome that is!), comes from country life, from a family coexistence with nature: in this case, a ladder propped against the trunk of a cherry tree, which has remained there after the harvest, done months before. That ladder, which at an inopportune time no longer serves any purpose, “I wish it would mean something.” Perhaps like poetry. Further on, we find a poem of a more ideological nature –which, in the final notes, the author acknowledges as “an attempt to read some of the ways of doing of [Pere] Gimferrer.” It repeats the verse five times: “We no longer know what to call it.” And it is done to insist on all that is falling apart for us: “Nothing is more rotten today / than walking with the name of Spain”; and, a few verses later: “All of Catalonia is a shell / a cracked husk / Nothing is more rotten today.”

In a slightly more just world, the jury of the award to which Dolors Miquel (Lleida, 1960) submitted El pit adormit at the end of 2024 would have proclaimed her book as the winner. It didn't happen that way, but the work has finally seen the light of day: in almost 500 pages of impressive intensity and ambition, the poet –author of some twenty volumes, including Haikús del camioner (Empúries, 1999) and El guant de plàstic rosa (Edicions 62, 2016)– combines various narrative threads, such as the detection and evolution of the cancer that was diagnosed five years ago, the chronicle of how Catalan poetry was reborn in the late nineties thanks to an alternative circuit of readings, reflections on misogyny – that of the past and that of the present – and fragments in which family memories intertwine with a passion for reading and writing.