The poet Rosa Font and the translator Eloi Creus have won the Cavall Verd awards, an initiative of the Association of Catalan Writers (AELC) that recognizes the best poetry in Catalan, whether original or translated. The award-winning works, Elliptic Temps and I desire and cremo, a translation of the work by Sappho of Lesvos, will receive the awards this Saturday. The delivery ceremony will take place in the Mallorcan municipality of Alcúdia, coinciding with the commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the death of the librarian and poet Maria Verger Ventayol.
The Cavall Verd Awards are also celebrating their fourth decade and, to celebrate both events, an extensive program has been programmed, with poetry recitals, round tables or a cultural route around Ventanyol, which will take place throughout the day.
The Alto Empordà poet, Rosa Font, has received the Rafael Jaume award for her collection of poems Temps el líptic, a "beauty of lyrical expression with an expressive depth of the environment of a daily life where pain and joy are mixed", recognizes the jury . Font portrays in her collection of poems the constant effort of approaching the hunch of life.
In addition to being a teacher of Catalan language and literature, Font has a large literary background of her own that highlights her passion for the land and landscape of the Alt Empordà. In it, older works such as Tres noies i el silenci or Distant Water stand out, even more recent ones such as La llum primara or Un locó a l'ombra. In addition, she is the author of novels such as The Ash Soul and The Eyeless Woman.
The distinction he will receive tomorrow during the ceremony is added to other awards previously received, including the Vila de Martorell, Festa d'Elx, Carles Riba, Ciudad de Palma de Novel·la and the Senyoriu d'Ausiàs March awards.
Eloi Creus had already been recognized for his talent as a translator when in 2019 he received the Vidal Alcover Translation Award. Now the jury of the XL Premis Cavall Verd has underlined "the excellence of the translation with a result of a very natural Catalan given the difficulty of translating a work as fragmentary as that of Sappho of Lesbos".
I desitjo i cremo collects two hundred fragments of the poetry of Sappho, poet by antonomasia of ancient Greece, who is also the first Western poet. Creus is also a classical philosopher and has translated other Ancient Greek texts of Aristophanes and Menandre.
This year, the jury of the XL Green Horse Awards was formed by the poets Sebastià Alzamora, Maria Josep Escrivà, Marta Pera Cucurell, Ponç Pons, and the vice-president of the AELC, Pere Gomila, who acted as president and secretary.
The awards are organized by the AELC, together with the sponsorship of the Insular Directorate of Linguistic Policy of the Council of Mallorca and the collaboration of CEDRO, the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes, Can Alcover, the Obra Cultural Balear and the Alcúdia town hall.
