Tugs in the Fog

Joan Margarit (1938-2021) was born in Sanaueja, La Segarra region, in Catalonia. He was an architect as well as a poet, and from 1968 until his retirement was also Professor of Structural Calculations at Barcelona's Technical School of Architecture, working for part of that time on Gaudi's Sagrada Familia cathedral. He first published poetry in Spanish, but after four books decided to write in Catalan. From 1980 he began to establish his reputation as a major Catalan poet. As well as publishing many collections in Catalan, he published Spanish versions of all his work, gaining recognition as a leading poet in Spanish. In 2008 he received the Premio Nacional de Poesia del Estado Espanol for his collection Casa de Misericordia, as well as the Premi Nacional de Literatura de la Generalitat de Catalunya. In 2013 he was awarded Mexico's Premio de Poetas del Mundo Latino Victor Sandoval for all his poetry. He was awarded the 2019 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary honour, worth EUR125,000, which generally alternates between Spanish and Latin American writers. He received this from King Felipe VI of Spain at a special ceremony at Barcelona's Palauet Albeniz in December 2020, the presentation being delayed by the coronavirus pandemic: the award is usually presented every April at an event in Madrid on the anniversary of the death in 1616 of Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. He also received the Reina Sofia Prize for Ibero-American Poetry 2019, the most important poetry award for Spain, Portugal and Latin America. Tugs in the Fog: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2006), translated by Anna Crowe, the ?rst English translation of his Catalan poetry, was a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation. Strangely Happy, a selection of later poems from Casa de Misericordia (2007) and Misteriosament felic (2008), also translated by Anna Crowe, was published by Bloodaxe in 2011. A third translation by Anna Crowe, Love Is a Place (Bloodaxe Books, 2016) includes all the poems from three recent Catalan collections: No era lluny ni dificil (It Wasn't Far Away or Difficult, 2010), Es perd el senyal (The Signal Is Fading, 2012) and Estimar es un lloc (From Where to Begin to Love Again, 2014). His final collection Wild Creature (Bloodaxe Books, 2021), also translated by Anna Crowe, brings together poems from his two latest collections, Un hivern fascinant (An amazing winter, 2017) and Animal de bosc (Wild creature, 2020).