Adrienne Cecile Rich (1929, Maryland – 2012, California) was an American lesbian poet, essayist, intellectual, critic and activist. Death at the age of 82. As a student, her poems won the prestigious Yale Prize for young poetry, from which A change of world (1951) emerged, which showed his formal technique.

Her next work, Diving into the wreck, shows the transformation of well-worked but imitative poetry to an energetic personal style. Her growing commitment to the feminist movement influenced many of her works. Her poetic work, together with that of Audre Lorde and Alice Walker, have inspired the struggle not only of North American feminists but also of Latin America.

Kenneth Patchen (December 13, 1911 – January 8, 1972) was an American poet and novelist. He experimented with different forms of writing and incorporated painting, drawing, and jazz music into his works, which have been compared with those of William Blake and Walt Whitman.

Patchen’s biographer wrote that he “developed in his fabulous fables, love poems, and picture poems a deep yet modern mythology that conveys a sense of compassionate wonder amidst the world’s violence.”

Along with his friend and peer Kenneth Rexroth, he was a central influence on the San Francisco Renaissance and the Beat Generation.

Guillaume Apollinaire (Rome, 1880 – Paris, 1918). French writer, spearhead of the Surrealist movement, he wrote a Futurist manifesto and admired Cubist painting. Immersed in his time, he intertwined poetry and life to the point of becoming one single thing. His awe of progress is reflected in his work, which remains a powerful influence in European poetry to this day.

Pilar Parcerisas (Manresa, 1957). Historian, art critic, essayist and comissioner of exhibitions. Doctor in History of Art and bachelor in Communication Sciences by the Autonomous University of Barcelona. As a commissioner, he learnt from Harald Szeemann and has produced several exhibitions on Joan Brossa, Francesc Torres, Joan Miró, Joseph Beuys, Pere Català i Pic, Pere Noguera, Salvador Dalí and Man Ray, as well as the exhibition cycles of the Vau and Annex spaces at the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica (1998-2002). She has published the books Conceptualismo(s). Poéticos, políticos y periféricos. Entorno al arte conceptual en España, 1964-1980 (2007) and Duchamp en España (2009). She is the art critic of the newspaper El Punt Avui. She has written the scripts for several movies and is President of the Associació Catalana de Crítics d’Art (ACCA) since 2007. She is member of the Consell Nacional de la Cultura i de les Arts de Catalunya.

Laia Noguera i Clofent (Calella, 1983). Bachelor in Catalan Philology by the University of Barcelona, she has published the poetry collections L’oscultor (Amadeu Oller prize, 2002), Fuga evasió (Recvll prize, 2003), Incendi (2005), No et puc dir res (Martí Dot prize, 2006), Els llops (2009; co-written with Esteve Plantada and Joan Duran), Triomf (Miquel de Palol prize, 2009), L’U (2010), Parets (2011), Caure (Ausiàs March prize, 2011) and Rius soterrats (2011; artist book). She has also published a stage adaptation of Anselm Turmeda’s Disputa de l’ase jointly with Albert Mestres (2009). She has done translation work from the Basque, Italian, Galician and Occitan languages. Several of her poems have been translated into Basque, Amazigh, Portuguese, Occitan, French, Italian, English and Spanish.

Sthéphane Mallarmé (Paris, 1842 – Valvins, France, 1898). French poet, creator of an obscure and ambitious poetic opus, his work anticipates the shift of poetry towards modernity, his influence still being present nowadays. Misunderstood in his time, Mallarmé handles words with truly alchemical devotion, searching for their creative force.

Allen Ginsberg (USA, 1926-1997) was a poet, the leading figure of the Beat generation. He acted as a nexus between the Beat movement of the 50s and the hippies of the 60s, and was friends with Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, William S. Burroughs, Patti Smith and Bob Dylan. Ginsberg’s poetry was heavily influenced by Modernism, Romanticism and the beat and cadence of Jazz, but also by his following of the Kagyu school of Buddhism and his Jewish upbringing. He considered himself to be a successor of William Blake and Walt Whitman. The power of his poetry, his long verses and his New World-influenced exhuberance reflect the continuity of the inspiration he strived for.

Marguerite Duras (Saigon, 1914 – Paris, 1966) was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter and film director. Her work, influenced at first by English narrative, evolved towards the more experimental style of the nouveau roman. L’amant (1984) won her the Goncourt Prize and became a worldwide success. Her literary contribution is vast, comprising forty novels and a dozen of plays.

Arthur Cravan (Switzerland, 1887 – Mexico, 1918), poet and boxer, was editor and writer at the magazine Maintenant, which prefigured the Dadaist movement and published his poetry, literary criticism and all kinds of written-word eccentricities. Fleeing from World War I, he left France and took shelter in Barcelona. From there, he set sail to New York, where he became acquainted with many personalities of the time. Arthur Cravan disappeared in 1918, when he set out alone on a rowboat into the Mexican Gulf; his body would never be found.

Blai Bonet (Santanyí, Mallorca, 1926-1997). Poet, novelist and art critic. A conflictive relationship with religion and his struggle with tuberculosis marked his personal and literary trajectory. In 1958 he published El mar, a novel that caused a stir both because of the subject matter and its literary treatment. In it, he incorporated new experimental trends that were in vogue around Europe. His efforts to create his own personal language, evolving towards the free-form, culminated in the poetry collection L’Evangeli segons un de tants (Carles Riba prize, 1962). In 1990 he was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi distinction by the Generalitat de Catalunya.