King Felipe VI will present the Joan Margarit International Poetry Prize to Sharon Olds at the Cervantes Institute in New York
The King of Spain, Felipe VI, will present the Joan Margarit International Poetry Prize to the American author Sharon Olds on Thursday 20 July at the Cervantes Institute in New York (United States). This award is the first edition of a recognition promoted by the Cervantes Institute and the publishing house La Cama Sol and the family of the poet Joan Margarit (1938 - 2021), to promote internationally the figure of the Catalan author, winner of the Cervantes Prize and Queen Sofia Prize for Poetry, among others, and to celebrate the talent of outstanding contemporary authors.
The jury unanimously decided to award the prize to Olds "for being a point of reference in American poetry", as well as for "his non-conformist and genuine writing". In its verdict, the jury highlighted "his commitment to truth and the ruthless presence of life in his poetry, something that is especially relevant in times of the culture of cancellation and in an age when many think that a machine can write the same poems that produce the tearing of the human".
Also taking part in the ceremony (at 6:30 p.m. local time in New York) will be Luis García Montero, director of the Cervantes Institute; Mònica Margarit, daughter of Joan Margarit; and Javier Santiso, founder of the publishing house La Cama Sol.
Also, representing Sharon Olds' facet as a teacher, two of her students, DeeSoul Carson and Silvina López Medin, will read - in English and Spanish, respectively - some of Olds' poems. Mònica Margarit will read pieces in Catalan.
The event will end with Felipe VI presenting the prize to the writer Sharon Olds, who will close the ceremony with a word of thanks. As part of this recognition, the award-winning poet's own speech will be included in a limited edition published by La Cama Sol, which will include works of art and poems, with translations into Spanish, English and French.
The award, created for the occasion by the sculptor Cristina Almodóvar (Madrid, 1970), is a book-object made with mixed techniques - drawing, sculpture and digital printing - that unites art and poetry. In the artist's own words, the piece "goes beyond two-dimensional representation, escaping from it. Poetry does the same. It transcends the life of the author. The name and work of Joan Margarit crosses frontiers with this prize".
The award ceremony can be followed live on the Instituto Cervantes YouTube channel.
Preliminary meeting with the media (5 p.m.)
Before the prize-giving ceremony (at 5 p.m. local time in New York), the Cervantes Institute will host a meeting with the media by the winning author, Sharon Olds, which will be joined by the Director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero; the daughter of the poet Joan Margarit and representative of the family, Mònica Margarit; and the economist and writer Javier Santiso, founder of the publishing house La Cama Sol.
Genuine, non-conformist author
Sharon Olds (San Francisco, United States, 1942) grew up in Berkeley (California), studied at Stanford University and received her PhD from Columbia in 1972. In 1980 she published her first book of poems, "Satan Says", followed by "The Dead and the Living" (1984), a collection of poems divided into two sections - "Poems for the Dead" and "Poems for the Living" - which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and has sold more than 50,000 copies, making it one of the best-selling volumes of poetry today.
A New York State Poet Laureate from 1998 to 2000, Olds is currently the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing in the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at New York University. Known for writing personal, biting poetry that describes both family life and world political events, her works include Stag's Leap (2012), a collection of poems that explored details of her divorce and for which she received the Pulitzer Prize in the United States and the T. S. Eliot Prize in England; and Arias (2019), shortlisted for the 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize. Author of twelve lyric works, Balladz (2022) is her most recent book.
In 2018, the Spanish version of "Olds Stag's Leap" was published, which Joan Margarit translated with her grandson Eduard Lezcano. In the prologue, Margarit stated: "I have known Sharon Olds to be a great poet for a long time, when I first read 'Satan Says', but making these versions has meant not only reading a good book of poems, but also an important level of learning for my own craft as a poet".
Prize in honour of Joan Margarit
The annual Joan Margarit International Poetry Prize aims to reward the work of foreign poets with a consolidated and internationally recognised career, in response to the interest Margarit always had in making known in his two languages, Catalan and Spanish, his favourite writers from other languages and countries - he translated Thomas Hardy, Rainer Maria Rilke and Elizabeth Bishop, among others.
The jury, made up of Luis García Montero, Javier Santiso, Mònica Margarit; the recently deceased professor and Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, Nuccio Ordine, and the director of the National Library, Ana Santos, unanimously decided last May to award the prize to the writer "for being a point of reference in North American poetry", as well as for "her non-conformist and genuine writing".
Submitted by José Antonio Sierra, Hispanismo advisor.