Joan Margarit, “the architect of the word,” dies at 82

The Catalan poet has died in Barcelona after being diagnosed at the end of 2020, with lymphatic cancer. 'Animal de bosc', (Forest Animal) a collection of poems in which he worked before his death, will be published in the coming weeks.

In 2020, shortly after making headlines and becoming the first Catalan-language author to win the Cervantes Prize, Joan Margarit (Sanahuja, Lérida, 1938) was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, which as he explained at the end of the year, made him live two parallel lives. The first, horrible, had to do with chemotherapy, the five-hour sessions, and exhaustion. The second, much brighter and wonderful, as he explained, came to him through poetry. Always poetry. He wrote up to 60 poems while cancer spread through his body, destroying everything except his words.

ABC CULTURA

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