*Montserrat Abelló’s Fifty Love Poems is an anthology selected from the many books the writer has published during a literary career spanning almost fifty years. This publication is an essential starting point for anyone wishing to gain a sense of Abelló’s complete range of work.
Fifty Love Poems contains the original Catalan poems with Montserrat Abelló’s own translations into English. It is her first book to be published in English.
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Translated by Montserrat Abelló
Edited by Ester Pou Jutglar
With a preface by Helena Buffery
Montserrat Abelló (Tarragona, 1918) is a leading contemporary author in Catalonia, both as a poet and translator. Involved in the feminist movements sice the 1970s, she is the author of a number of women anthologies and has translated into Catalan the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Adrienne Rich, among others. Her poetic voice has been variously described by critics as intimate, suggestive, existential and rebellious. She has been awarded several prestigious literary prizes.
Ester Pou Jutglar teaches Catalan language and culture at Queen Mary, University of London. Her research focuses on Feminist Translation Studies, Translation and Censorship, Gender and twentieth-century Catalan women writers. She is currently preparing a PhD on the Catalan poet Montserrat Abelló and her literary translations into Catalan of American poet, Sylvia Plath.
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*The Body's Reason is the first book by poet Maria-Mercè Marçal to be translated into English. She is a key figure in Catalan poetry of the post-Franco era, who was actively engaged in the transition to democracy and the emergence of a feminist movement in Spain. Hers is a uniquely challenging voice expressing a distinctive Catalan gendered perspective.
This book has been translated by Montserrat Abelló and Noèlia Diaz-Vicedo
Written during the last years of her life when she was fighting cancer, the first Catalan edition of this book, Raó del Cos, was published two years after her death. Faced with death she opens a dialogue between life and poetry, the ephemeral and the eternal, marked by subtle images and a language moulded by her feminism. Dealing with love, illness and death, The Body's Reason is a book full of poetic energy.
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Maria-Mercè Marçal (1952–1998) was a poet, feminist, political activist, essayist, translator and critic. Her collections of poetry include Cau de llunes (Den of Moons), which won the prestigious Carles Riba Prize for poetry in 1976, Bruixa de dol (The Mourning Witch), published in 1979, Sal oberta (Open Salt), Desglaç (Thawing) and Terra de Mai (The Neverland) published in 1982, which was the first description of lesbian love in Catalan literature. She died in Barcelona on 5 July 1998 of cancer at the age of 45. Raó del cos was published posthumously in 2000.
Noèlia Díaz Vicedo is a poet, translator and researcher of women’s literature and feminism. She has published poems in the magazines Quadern de les idees, les arts i les lletres and Corresponding Voices, and in an anthology of young women poets in Catalan Donzelles de l’any 2000. She has translated the poetry of Marçal and Chilean poet Carmen García Palma into English and is a co-editor of the magazine Alba Londres. Culture in Translation
(*Textes and details provided by Francis Boutle Publishers: http://www.francisboutle.co.uk/)
