ABC interviews Catalan poet Joan Margarit. “A wise old man can get by, but an old idiot is insufferable.”

The great Catalan poet was nominated for the Queen Sofia Prize for Iberoamerican Poetry, which recognizes the merit of his work.

Joan Margarit (Sanaüja, Lleida, 1938), from his point of view at 81 years old, says that the extreme endpoints of life, not the turbulent mess in the middle, are more similar than we think. 

Childhood and old age are clearer and more obvious than the period we tend to call maturity. They are times, too, where humor emerges with total freedom, perhaps because manners matter less than sincerity, which is the fundamental ingredient in his poems.

Throughout his career, the author has parceled out intimacy across thirty poems, which have been published in both Catalan and Spanish. They have become some of the greatest examples of lyric poetry in Spain. He already has a handful of awards to his credit, such as the National Poetry Award of 2008, and now adds the Queen Sofía Ibero-American Poetry Award. “It’s an important award, but with these things, you always have doubts of whether you deserve it or not,” he says by phone, upon learning the good news.

Read the interview in its original language: ABC

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