PalmaAlthough Josep Pedrals (Barcelona, 1979) attends to us as a representative of Catalan poets, he is the most experienced glossator of the interview. A very Mallorcan tradition. On the other hand, Maria Antònia Massanet (Artà, 1980) admits that it gives her “a lot of respect” to make glosses. “It’s because I write without metric or rhyme”, he apologizes, smiling and breaking clichés from a good start.
Where does your vocation come from?
— JP My father (Ricard Pedrals) had a spectacular library. Philosophy, theology, but he was also very fond of poetry. He was one of those who had breakfast reading (Josep) Carner. Since I was a child, having poetry at home seemed the most normal thing in the world to me, and since I was a talker of sorts, I read everything to myself. At the age of seven or eight he was already writing poems. In high school, I already wrote a little every day, with more of a vocation for work. As a poet I am very prolific, also because I work on commission.
— MAM This motivates a lot!
— JP Yes, if they pay! (laugh).
Does it motivate more than sadness, which is usually associated with this genre?
— JP I’m not very sad. It’s a problem I have.
— MAM I started writing at 25, much older. I have an autobiographical poem that says: “I was born in a house without books”. My parents had no education and nothing from a library. I loved to read, but I did it in a self-taught, messy way. I thought that writing poetry was what men did, old, intellectual, very wise. When I started studying literary theory and comparative literature, I started daring to write humorous poems to entertain my classmates at lunchtime. And here I started.
What are the Catalan and Balearic literary worlds like?
— JP They are a single system at the level of the publishing movement, although Catalonia has a tendency to isolate what it considers peripheral. This about the whole: poetry is the poor sister, and it doesn’t come from here anymore. we are all friends
— MAM There are more connections between the Balearic Islands and Catalonia than between Catalonia and Valencia. But yes, everything is more centralized in Barcelona, there are more activities and possibilities, despite the fact that the Mallorca Literària foundation does a great job on the island. There is also more competitiveness.
Are poets more connected now?
— JP Poetry is more social. Reciting a poem is easier than reciting a story. It’s closer to the party. We have been a land of troubadours since the 12th century.
— MAM Going to recitals by good people makes me feel great scribe. Listening to others can be a catalyst for creativity. People are working more and more on the subject of recitation. There are not many poets who recite badly.
Should poetry be political?
— MAM It is and must be political. The first great works of Western universal literature were epics that already conveyed certain values. Poetry is not an innocent and purely formal and aesthetic game. Over time, it has served to denounce injustices, expose tyrants. Poets have been the first to be persecuted in dictatorships.
— JP There is politics even in the way you make humor, in how you present your ‘I’, it is inevitable. The decisions you make at the syntactic level are also political… There is direct poetry in barraca that is already a manifesto. But there is also a veiled politics. It’s interesting to say, look, this ultra-conservative poet who pretends not to do politics, and is doing it subtly, playing the ‘longuis’.
How should poetry be taught?
— MAM I have done workshops in the first and second year of ESO. When you dismantle the clichés, such as that poetry is very difficult, it is not understood, it is boring… and you show passion, I can see that it works, they manage to make some brutal poems. Poetry is often not taught well. I have met colleagues who do not read it and do not understand it. And of course, it is very difficult to teach it that way.
— JP I play the donkey a lot, then people remember me. Last year, I was going to do a session at a first ESO. When I walked in the door, some boys said to me: “Hey, we’re in the 4th year of high school, you came when we were first, and you told us that poem from…”, and they recited it in its entirety! The poem was very bad, it also has slurs. But I was very excited.
What is your library like?
— JP Giant, because I inherited my father’s. There are about 30,000 books, and I am expanding it. I haven’t read it all, not at all. There are philosophy and theology books that I don’t think I’ll ever read.
— MAM It is an expanding library. It’s been a while since it outgrew the study to spread around the room, the dining room, and I have books all over the place except the bathroom.
Source: www.arabalears.cat
