There are times that when a reader makes a discovery they also feel cheated. How can it be that until then he had not heard of this or that writer who was so good and surprising? That happened to me with Clarice Lispector at the turn of the century, and also in 2007 when among the participants in the Sant Cugat Poetry Festival I heard the voice and words of Antonina Canyelles (Palma, 1942).
In her case it was relatively easy to understand, because although she had published a couple of books in the early eighties, readers had to wait until 2005 to read her again and discover her, already with her Piercing (Lleonard Muntaner), and especially when It was followed, in 2011, by the anthology Putas y consentidos en Lapislázuli, which since then has been its leading publisher (with the exception of La duna i lacascada, in Edicions 62 in 2013, Nus baixant published a scale in in 2015, Les banyes del croissant in 2018 and the recent Exercicis d'una mà insomne, in 2021).
This Tuesday the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes (ILC) paid tribute to him at the Biblioteca de Catalunya (BC), not because he has just turned 80, but "taking advantage of the fact that he turns 80", according to the director of the ILC, Izaskun Arretxe , recalling that she is a “punk poet, a female bullet”, who has remained “on the margins for being a woman, for having her own opinions, for being from Mallorca, for being a poet and a free woman, for not being in any small group, and because she is, after all, a necessary poet”. Previously, the director of the BC, Eugènia Serra, had welcomed a writer “who she does not leave indifferent” to “everyone's house, and especially poets'”. And later, a video of the Minister of Culture, Natàlia Garriga (who could not attend because the general policy debate was being held in Parliament) praised and congratulated the poet.
Immediately afterwards, the journalist Anna Ballbona did a brief interview with the honoree, who already made it clear from the outset that "I'm starting to get tired of that punk poet thing, it's a bit stale because I consider myself a modern poet and punk is of the seventies”. Canyelles explained, among many other things, that she is a poet and a short-distance runner, so "if she were a runner, she alone could run the 100 meters." She had always written, but when she won the Marià Aguiló prize in 1979 they did not want to publish her book, and she had to do it herself, with that first Quadern de conseqüències and later with the Patchwork with serigraphs by Esperança Mestres. Later, she almost 25 years of silence "because she had no one."
And yes, 2005 was the year of that Piercing and two years later he coincided in Algeria with who would later be his editor, Jon López de Viñaspre, who in 2011 inaugurated his publishing house Lapislàtzuli with the anthology Putes i consentits, which according to Ballbona marked "one and two or more generations of poets, especially young, but not only."
After López de Viñaspre presented the trailer for a documentary that is being shot about his work, a brief round table was held with himself and the poets Biel Mesquida and Àngels Gregori, who assured that “Antonina Canyelles is our Annie Leibovitz”, and that beyond the complaint there is no regret, because it combines "beauty with sensitivity".
Mesquida explained that with Canyelles a mixed DNA unites him, certainly, but also that the two are "ambitious and complex", and as poets, in addition, "psychopaths and children of cousins", and not only that, but when he reads it he comes “escriguera (desire or rather need to write), because her poems push you like an impetuous wind”. In addition, she recalled her fondness for oriental poetry, which "is not imperative or authoritarian", that she makes "snapshots of words".
For her part, López de Viñaspre recalled that hers is "a love story that arises from a road movie in Algeria", with an author whose poetry "over time gains followers and comes very easily", but as she pointed out Mesquida, "is not easy, but rather polyphonic."
Next, the Jansky duo, with Laia MaLo and Jaume Reus (between one and the other electronics, flute and voices) gave a recital incorporating Canyelles' voice live and by means of vocal samplers, reviewing with the author some of her poems and taking them beyond the written page. And the applause of a full room for a poet who assured that she had just turned eighty, but "get ready, because in ten years I'll be back."
Catalan version, here
