Joan Margarit i Consarnau

Joan Margarit i Consarnau Poems

Joan Margarit i Consarnau Biography

Joan Margarit i Consarnau (Catalan pronunciation: [ʒuˈan mərɣəˈɾit i kunsərˈnaw]) (born in Sanaüja, May 11, 1938) is a Catalan poet, architect and retired Professor. Born to the parents of Joan Margarit i Serradell, an architect from Barcelona and Trinitat Consarnau i Sabaté, a teacher at l'Ametlla de Mar (Tarragona), he grew up at the time of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. His family moved many times around Catalonia. In 1954 the family settled at the Canary Islands, but in 1956 Margarit returned to Barcelona to complete architecture studies, lodging at the University Hall of Residence the Collegi Major Sant Jordi. It would be a year after he finished his studies that Joan would meet his future wife, Mariona Ribalta. A year later, they were married (1963). They now have three daughters; Mònica, Anna & Joana, and a son, Carlos. Since 1975, Margarit has lived in Sant Just Desvern. Since 1980 he has worked there as an architect with friend and associate Carle Buxadé. In addition to that, from 1968 until recently, he was also Professor of Structural Calculations at Barcelona's Technical School of Architecture in the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. Since 1963, Magrit has firmly established himself as a recognisable Spanish poet. Margarit first started publishing poetry in Spanish, in 1963 and 1965. After a break of ten years, he published Crónica, with help of his friend Joaquim Marco, director of the Ocnos series at the publishing house Barral Editores. From 1980 onwards, he began to establish himself as a poet in the Catalan language. His works were translated to English, Russian and Hebrew. Recitations of Margarit's poems with musical backdrop were recorded by the musicians Pere Rovira, Gerard Quintana, Araceli Aiguaviva and Miquel Poveda. In October 2008, Magrit received the Premio Nacional de Poesía por Casa de Misericordia.)

The Best Poem Of Joan Margarit i Consarnau

First Love

In the dreary Girona of my seven-year-old self,
where postwar shop-windows
wore the greyish hue of scarcity,
the knife-shop was a glitter
of light in small steel mirrors.
Pressing my forehead against the glass,
I gazed at a long, slender clasp-knife,
beautiful as a marble statue.
Since no one at home approved of weapons,
I bought it secretly, and, as I walked along,
I felt the heavy weight of it, inside my pocket.
From time to time I would open it slowly,
and the blade would spring out, slim and straight,
with the convent chill that a weapon has.
Hushed presence of danger:
I hid it, the first thirty years,
behind books of poetry and, later,
inside a drawer, in amongst your knickers
and amongst your stockings.
Now, almost fifty-four,
I look at it again, lying open in my palm,
just as dangerous as when I was a child.
Sensual, cold. Nearer my neck.

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