Bèsties 11. Bonet

Blai Bonet
2015
11.00
ISBN: 978-84-7226-982-8

11.00


A representative selection of Blai Bonet’s poetry, coinciding with the publication of his personal journals Els ulls / La mirada and of his complete works. In this way, justice is done for one of the best poets in Catalan literature, as the importance of his work is undisputed and garners universal recongnition. The power of his work remains alive thanks to a poetry that is bold and radical through a simple language, without artifice, as he manages to portray in a humane light the hardships of such difficult moments as illness or war. Pau Vadell offers a quality glimpse of Bonet’s work, so it can be approached in the most intimate of ways.

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.

Pau Vadell Vallbona (Santanyí, Mallorca, 1984) has a consolidated career as a poet, writer, historian, cultural administrator and editor. He has published several poetry collections, such as Quan salives (BTV prize, 2005), Convit al silenci (J. M. López Picó prize, 2009) and Temple (Miquel Àngel Riera prize, 2009). He is a regular contributor to the literary magazines Pèl capell, Caràcters, Poetari and Superna. He is coordinator at the publishing house AdiAedicions.

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Bèsties is a wallpaper collection that combines the poetry and the portraits of some of the most acclaimed authors of universal literature. A selection of excerpts —posthumous, unpublished, forgotten— are presented in a groundbreaking format by the translators, current Catalan poets. The posters escape the parcelling of conventional pagination to project in a single canvas the unity of meaning emanating from the poems. Each wallpaper comes with a separate front page including a foreword by the translator, which contextualizes their selection and situates the author in their context.