The Bristol Poetry Institute, in collaboration with the Instituto Ramón Llull and the Department of Hispanic, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies, are pleased to invite you to a showcase of recent Catalan poetry. This one-hour event will feature bilingual readings with English translations, of four Catalan poets.
Mon, 24 April 2023, 18:00 – 21:00 BST
Wills Memorial Building
1.11 Old Council Chamber
Queens Rd Bristol BS8 1RL
About the poets
Míriam Cano is a journalist, writer and translator. A lecturer and director at the Bloom School where she gives seminars on Poetic Reading and Creation, she also works with several Catalan cultural media outlets as a columnist and literary journalist. Notable in her career as a writer are several collections of poems, among them Buntsandstein (Red Sandstone, Viena, 2013), winner of the 2012 Martí Dot prize, Ancoratge (Anchorage, Terrícola, 2016), and Vermell de Rússia (Russian Red, laBreu Edicions, 2020). She also wrote the short story “La Comuna de París” (The Paris Commune) in the jointly authored volume Cremen Cels (Burning Skies, laBreu Edicions, 2017), a project in collaboration with Martí Sales and Antònia Vicens. As a translator she has rendered into Catalan works by authors including Emily Dickinson, Albert Camus, Sandra Cisneros, Maggie Nelson, Lauren Groff, Martha Nussbaum, Joana Russ and John Ashbery. She is also the coeditor of the magazine Carn de Cap.
Jaume C. Pons Alorda (Caimari, Mallorca, 1984) holds a bachelor’s degree in English Philology and a masters in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature and Cultural Management from the University of the Balearic Islands. He is an award-winning writer, translator, publisher, and creative writing teacher. He in the author of multiple poetry collections, including the trilogy Tots els sepuclres (2015), as well as Cala foc als ossos (2016), Era (2018), Riu, bèstia (2023) and Mil súmmums (2022), among others. He has also published prose works, such as Faula (2012) and Ciutat de Mal (2019). Pons Alorda has translated Walt Whitman, William Wordsworth , and Elizabeth Bishop into Catalan, and he is currently working on translations of Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Iris Murdoch, Edgar Allan Poe and William Blake. He is currently editor of the Artificium and Debiaix series for the publishing house, Lleonard Muntaner. Additionally, he writes articles in the press (Ara Balears, Lletres Bàrbares, El Temps) and participates in the podcast L’illa de Maians at the Ona Llibres bookshop in Barcelona.
Xavier Mas Craviotto (Navàs, 1996) studied Catalan Philology and a postgraduate program in Language Consultancy and Publishing Services at the University of Barcelona. For two years, he worked at the Research Centre for Sociolinguistics and Communication (CUSC-UB). He is currently a lecturer at the University of Bristol, where he teaches Cataln language and culture, and also works as a proofreader for Catalan publishing houses. He is one of the cofounders of “Com ho diria”, a digital platform that specializes in slang used by young Catalan speakers. He is also an award-winning author of poetry and prose fiction. At the age of 17, he was a finalist in the Jordi Sierra i Fabra Literary Prize of Spain and Latin America and, since then, he has won more than twenty narrative and poetry awards. His first novel, La mort lenta (2019) won the Documenta Prize, and he has recently published his second novel, La pell del món (2023). He has also published three poetry collections: Renills de cavall negre (2019), which won the Salvador Iborra prize, La gran nàusea (2021) and La llum subterrània (2023), which was awarded the Ausiàs March prize. His short stories have been included in collaborative anthologies and he has participated in many poetry readings and panel discussions about language and literature.
Eduard Escoffet (Barcelona, 1979) is a poet and visual/sound artist. He has worked across many styles of poetry (visual and written poetry, installations, oral poetry, poetic action), but principally is principally invested in sound poetry and poetry performance. He has performed in poetry festivals and events across Europe, China, the United States, South Africa, and many countries in Latin America. Starting from an exploration of the body, the voice and the text, his poetry expands into territories such as politics, sex and architecture, with special attention to their political meaning. He has presented his work in venues and festivals all over the world, and has created sound and audiovisual pieces for several institutions and festivals. He has published the poetry collections Gaire (2012), El terra i el cel (2013), and Menys i tot (2017) in Catalan; the artist’s book Estramps (2021) with the artist Evru; as well as prints of his visual and graphic poetry. Escoffet has also released two records with the electronic music group Bradien: Pols (2012) and Escala (2015). He is now member of the band Barba Corsini (www.barbacorsini.net). http://propost.org/escoffet. Videos: http://youtube.com/txtstate. Sound: http://soundcloud.com/txtstate