The Arab poet Adonis, winner of the second edition of the Joan Margarit International Poetry Prize
The Joan Margarit International Poetry Prize celebrates its second edition with the announcement of the award, which has gone to the Arab poet Ali Ahmad Said Esber, known by his pseudonym, Adonis, and one of the most outstanding representatives of contemporary Arab poetry.
The jury, which met in Madrid on 25 June, was made up of Javier Santiso, founder of Editorial la Cama Sol; Luis García Montero, director of the Cervantes Institute and poet; Héctor Abad Faciolince, writer; Ana Santos, former director of the Biblioteca Nacional, where Joan Margarit's legacy is housed, and Mònica Margarit, the poet's daughter.
The winner of this second edition, Adonis, was born in Syria in 1930, but has spent his entire literary career in Lebanon, where he won the National Poetry Prize in 1974. At the age of 24, he spent eleven months in prison, accused of subversive activities. Shortly afterwards, he founded the magazine Shi'ir (Poetry) and began an intense creative work recognised with countless prizes, the most recent being the prestigious Goethe Prize, an award for an entire literary career, and Els Premis Internacionals Terenci Moix, both in 2011; the Sting Dagerman Prize, in 2016, and the PEN/Nabokov Prize, in 2017.
His works include some of the most significant in contemporary Arabic poetry, such as Songs of Mihyar the Damascuser (1961); Celebrations; Book of Fleeing and Moving through the Climates of Day and Night (1965); Epitaph for New York (1971), and his monumental three-volume work The Book. He is also a scholar of Arabic poetry and literature, as his essays on poetry and poetics reveal: The Divan of Arabic Poetry (1964); Introduction to Arabic Poetry (1976); Arabic Poetics (1989); and Sufism and Surrealism (2008).
Adonis is known as a pioneer of modern Arabic poetry that draws on the sources of world literature and reflects his commitment to human rights. He has been considered as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature on several occasions.
The jury, which this year received more than 30 nominations from poets from all over the world with long and internationally recognised careers, unanimously decided to award the prize to Adonis "for a lyrical work of indisputable quality and for its cultural dialogue between civilisations, between East and West. It is also a bicultural poetic work, as is Joan Margarit's".
After learning of the decision, the Arab poet said: "It is an honour to receive this prize for two reasons, because it is awarded in Spain, a creative and diverse land, in the name of the great poet Joan Margarit, and because it contributes, as was his aim, to building bridges between different cultures".
The award ceremony for the Joan Margarit International Poetry Prize 2024 will take place next autumn. The publishing house La Cama Sol will publish the speech given by the laureate on the occasion of receiving the prize and will distribute it both in Spain and abroad, with translations into Spanish, English and French. It will be a limited edition, which will include poems and works of art, and will be given as a gift to those involved in the celebration of the award.
Joan Margarit International Poetry Prize
The prize, which is awarded annually, rewards the work of foreign poets with a consolidated and internationally recognised career, in response to the interest that Joan Margarit always had in making his favourite poets from other languages and countries known in his two languages, Catalan and Spanish (he translated Thomas Hardy, Rainer Maria Rilke and Elizabeth Bishop, among others).
