Joan Margarit (1938-2021) wrote that “freedom is a bookstore”. He argued that in a bookstore there are no disputes. All the books speak in silence, although with force, knowing that on neighboring shelves there are others that defend different things and, nevertheless, there are no fights.
In his private bookstore there was Verdaguer or Antonio Machado, who expressed themselves in their mother tongue and in their almost mother tongue. Among many other volumes, poets such as Homer, Rilke, Thomas Hardy, Elisabeth Bishop or Sharon Olds were cited. In 2018, together with her grandson Eduard Lezcano, she produced the Spanish version of "Stag's leap" or "El salto del deer", a collection of poems published in 2012 in which she explored details of her divorce and for which she received the Pulitzer (and more distinctions).
"I know that Sharon Olds has been a great poet for a long time, when I first read 'Satan Says', but making these versions has meant, in addition to reading a good book of poems, an important learning level for my own craft as a poet," he stated in the prologue of his translation.
These words are a true endorsement so that, starting this Thursday, Margarit and Olds will live on the same shelf in their shared bookstore. At the headquarters of the Instituto Cervantes in New York, King Felipe VI presented Olds with the first Joan Margarit international poetry prize, promoted by the institute itself, by the publishing house La Cama Sol and the family of the Catalan poet.
“When I found out that they had given me this recognition, it was as if I received a gift from heaven,” Olds said after receiving the award, created by sculptor Cristina Almodóvar, an object book that unites art and poetry. "I apologize for my California accent in encouraging the arts, which, if anything, can save our Earth and ourselves," he added.
His distinction is based on the fact that Olds is considered a benchmark in American poetry for "her non-conformist and genuine writing." It also highlights "his commitment to the truth and the ruthless presence of life in his poetry, something that acquires special relevance in times of cancellation culture and at a time when many think that a machine can write the same poems that human tears produce." (Note: she doesn't believe it)
This is how the jury, made up of Luis García Montero, director of the Cervantes Institute; Javier Santiso, founder of La Cama Sol; Mònica Margarit, daughter of the poet; Ana Santos, director of the National Library; and the Italian philosopher Nuccio Ordine, Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities who recently died after the deliberations and without being able to receive this recognition in person.
Felipe VI paid tribute to Ordine in his speech, which he described as a great humanist, committed to education and values rooted in the most universal European thought, "values that today, more than ever, we have to defend as a basis for coexistence".
In an unusual exercise of frankness and humility in leaders, the monarch, addressing the graceful in English, acknowledged that the awarding of this prize had revealed to him "a work that he had not seen before" and that it had not only allowed him to understand Margarit's complimentary words towards the author, but had also discovered the depth of her feelings about life.
Sharon Olds, born in San Francisco in 1942, grew up in Berkerley, studied at Stanford University and received her doctorate from Columbia University in New York in 1972. In 1980 she published her first book of poems, "Satan Says", which was followed in 1984 by "The Dead and the Living", for which she won the National Book Critics Circle Award and which has sold more than 50,000 copies, a figure which makes it one of the most successful in current poetry. She served as a New York State Poet from 1998 to 2000 and is a Professor of Creative Writing at New York University (NYU).
"Margarit and Olds question with their verses the romantic twinning between beauty and truth," stressed the poet García Montero. “That Sharon Olds has won the first edition of the international Joan Margarit award is a beautiful rhyme of culture. It is a poetry that cannot be digested at the table of hypocrisy, prepared with the clean linen of a luxurious tablecloth, shiny cutlery and the presumed flame of the candles. Sharon Olds does not sit, nor does she sit at the table of lies, ”he stressed.
This creative reflection connects with the principles of the Catalan poet, who said that without erudition there would continue to be poetry, but without truth, no.
The award-winner remarked that her relationship with Margarit was deeper than the short time they shared, since they only met a couple of times. She assured that she was knocked out when she met at a festival and listened to her poems.
“They were unlike anything I had ever read. For some reason, I had not yet read him in this country and the clarity, quality, piety, honesty, humor, wit and architectural solidity of the music were wonders to me. I wish I could write more like this and possibly since then I have written a bit more like that thanks to his teachings and his themes of common light and love," Olds confessed.
Because although she was the winner, the evening became a tribute to Margarit. King Felipe VI recalled that when he accepted the Cervantes Prize in 2019, the same poet said that he had "already a long life dedicated to the Catalan and Spanish languages, extracting his own inner peace from both, but, above all, trying to provide readers with that help, defense and comfort against the elements, which has always been the main mission of poetry".
There was a projection of Margarit reciting, a true show of the word. As her daughter remarked, he "was enthusiastic about reciting and with her powerful voice he filled the entire space." As the writer (and architect) used to do, three poems were read ("Un senzill comiat", "Un preu" and "La muntanya més alta"), in Spanish, English and Catalan.
Monica Margarit maintained that the international nature of this recognition will allow her father's work to be disseminated in other countries where perhaps his work is not known. She also fulfills the mission of making foreign authors known in Catalan and Spanish, as Margarit intended with her translations. "I think he would be happy," said the daughter about the establishment of the award that bears the name of her father.
