Strangely Happy

Joan Margarit (1938-2021) was one of Spain’s major modern writers. He worked as an architect and first published his work in Spanish, but for the past four decades became known for his mastery of the Catalan language, and was Spain’s most widely acclaimed contemporary poet. The melancholy and candour of his poetry show his affinity with Thomas Hardy, whose work he translated. In the much praised Tugs in the Fog: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2006), Joan Margarit evoked the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, the harshness of life in Barcelona under Franco, and grief at the death of a beloved handicapped daughter, reminding us that it is not death we have to understand but life. Now in the more recent work translated in Strangely Happy, he builds an architecture of the human spirit out of the unpromising materials of self-doubt, despair and death. In writing stripped of all inessentials, and in the company of his dead, Joan Margarit confronts old age and his own death in poems that go on moving us with their harsh, poignant music. His poetry confronts the worst that life can throw at us, yet what lingers in the mind is its warmth and humanity.

Joan Margarit (1938-2021) was born in Sanaüja, La Segarra region, in Catalonia. He was an architect as well as a poet, and from 1968 until his retirement was also Professor of Structural Calculations at Barcelona’s Technical School of Architecture, working for part of that time on Gaudí’s Sagrada Família cathedral. He first published poetry in Spanish, but after four books decided to write in Catalan. From 1980 he began to establish his reputation as a major Catalan poet. As well as publishing many collections in Catalan, he published Spanish versions of all his work, gaining recognition as a leading poet in Spanish. In 2008 he received the Premio Nacional de Poesía del Estado Español for his collection Casa de Misericòrdia, as well as the Premi Nacional de Literatura de la Generalitat de Catalunya. In 2013 he was awarded Mexico’s Premio de Poetas del Mundo Latino Víctor Sandoval for all his poetry. He was awarded the 2019 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary honour, worth €125,000, which generally alternates between Spanish and Latin American writers. He received this from King Felipe VI of Spain at a special ceremony at Barcelona's Palauet Albéniz in December 2020, the presentation being delayed by the coronavirus pandemic: the award is usually presented every April at an event in Madrid on the anniversary of the death in 1616 of Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. He also received the Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry 2019, the most important poetry award for Spain, Portugal and Latin America. Tugs in the Fog: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2006), translated by Anna Crowe, the first English translation of his Catalan poetry, was a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation. Strangely Happy, a selection of later poems from Casa de Misericòrdia (2007) and Misteriosament feliç (2008), also translated by Anna Crowe, was published by Bloodaxe in 2011. A third translation by Anna Crowe, Love Is a Place (Bloodaxe Books, 2016) includes all the poems from three recent Catalan collections: No era lluny ni difícil (It Wasn’t Far Away or Difficult, 2010), Es perd el senyal (The Signal Is Fading, 2012) and Estimar és un lloc (From Where to Begin to Love Again, 2014). His final collection Wild Creature (Bloodaxe Books, 2021), also translated by Anna Crowe, brings together poems from his two latest collections, Un hivern fascinant (An amazing winter, 2017) and Animal de bosc (Wild creature, 2020).