Palau de la Virreina. A music band begins to play, dressed in sport. They are wearing tracksuits. They are De Mortimers, the band that has accompanied Pau Riba in recent years. They play and say that “it was a week… poetic… on the Rambla, the main emotional artery of Barcelona, that…”, well, the fact is that they were waiting for Núria Martínez Vernis, the poet, who arrives in a bicycle, with a long coat and underneath, also, sportswear – an outfit of the base of the Spanish basketball team, also Núria Martínez, number 10; Moi dels Mortimers is wearing a Laia Palau T-shirt. And the Mortimers ask him about the proclamation, which Martínez – “vaia patines!” – says that she has done, takes the bike and leaves, disappears. She is called and she appears above, above the musicians, on the balcony. And yes, the proclamation begins. Among the public, poets such as Enric Casasses or Guim Valls, cultural activists such as Carles Llacer or Anna Cerdà, the Mayor Ada Colau and the Councilor for Culture, Jordi Martí.
“We are in the pertinent ultrasound / model showcase / between infra and supra / Barcelona boys and girls / in a city show / that speculates on the thigh, pulls out the chest and ass / and exploits everything with crazy poetry”, he says. And among the abstract verses he points to criticism and celebration, against gentrification and for the party, because “tenderness is that I love you.” However, “it’s easy to get dizzy with the partridge we don’t have.” “Barcelona,” he says, “is the village / of my family-nuclear power plant / for rent 90 years ago / and now we are destroying / the short, short, short memory”, and that’s when Pau Riba appears among the verses, first with the reference to his house, the high house of Tiana, and his wife, Memi, and “I can say Pau i want to say poet”, and also comes the “toad” and “that poetry is Dioptria”. To end by assuring: “I know enough / what is the power of the word, / of the word no and of the non-word. / And that work is what is done between dance and dance. / (and here we dance) ”.
And they dance, and the troupe picks up their instruments and goes up the Rambla, in a parade, and Pepino Pascual is added, among many. “Let’s go towards poetry!” Martínez yells at the people –many of them are stunned tourists–, who observe, take photos of them and follow them until we cut through Bonsuccés, with the musicians playing music by Pau Riba, such as Licors, until they arrive at the Jardins de la Casa de la Misericòrdia.
There, poetry changes form, from the popular format to sound experimentation, the avant-garde, with an intense program – now curated by Lis Costa and Míriam Reyes, who had already thought of it for the failed 2020 – with Tomomi Adachi and Hannah Silva. , first, Danielle de Picciotto and then, to finish, Pamela Z. Now, Barcelona Poesia has begun, the first of the seven days with the verses that spread throughout the city.
Catalan version, here
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