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.”

Catalan literature received a healthy dose of self-esteem yesterday, which will carry it proudly at least until Sant Jordi's Day. The Night of Catalan Letters brought together a large institutional contingent at the National Museum of Catalonia—including the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa; the Mayor of Barcelona, ​​Jaume Collboni; and former President Jordi Pujol, among many others, and the absence of the PP, Vox, and Aliança Catalana parties—as well as representatives from the publishing sector, from major groups (Planeta, Penguin Random House, and Abacus Futur) and independent publishers such as L'Altra and La Segona Cultura. A successor to the Night of Saint Lucy, the gala was broadcast live on TV3, placing it, in terms of scale and scope, on par with the Gaudí Awards ceremony. The evening's deluge of accolades was largely theatrical and, above all, marked by a Mallorcan accent. One of the star awards of the gala, the Sant Jordi, went to Carles Rebassa (Palma, 1977) for Prometheus in a thousand waysThis is the second novel by the writer and poet, who in 2016 debuted in narrative with It was them (Angle) and in 2018 he already won Carles Riba of poetry with Dirty sounds"I'm delighted to have won these two prizes; it means participating in a tradition and giving it a place in the present and a hope for its continuation," Rebassa stated. The writer has a very long career and has received numerous awards, especially for his poetry, such as the Ausiàs March and Gabriel Ferrater prizes.

There are loves capable of shaking the foundations of those who experience them thanks to their "bloodthirsty, revolutionary, and erotic" dimension. So pretty and tyrannical (Bow), with what Blanca Luz Vidal (Barcelona, ​​​​1986) has won the latest Carles Riba Prize, delves into a turbulent and difficult period, in which the liberating desire ends up poisoning the voice, as powerful as it is anguished, that conveys the poems. The book coincides on the new release counters with the recovery of Maripasoula, a trip to French Guiana that the author made more than a decade ago: published by Tushita for the first time in 2015, she is now putting it back into circulation –and rightly so– Editor Club. This light-filled adventure contrasts with the dense, twisted texts of the author's latest book.