Ángela Segovia

- Spain -

Ángela Segovia (Ávila, 1987) has published the books ¿Te duele? (Félix Grande Young Poetry V Prize, 2009); de paso a la ya tan (ártese quien pueda ed., 2013); La curva se volvió barricada (La uÑa RoTa 2016), National Prize for Literature, Young Poetry category, 2017; Amor divino (La uÑa RoTa, 2018); Pusieron debajo de mi mare un magüey (La uÑa RoTa, 2020) and Mi paese Salvaje (La uÑa RoTa, 2021), which received the 2021 Best Poetry Book Award from Las Librerías Recomiendan. He translated the book CO CO CO U, by Luz Pichel (La uña rota, 2017). From September 2014 to September 2016, she was a Madrid City Council creation fellow at the Residencia de Estudiantes. In 2019 he obtained the Fundación Villalar scholarship with the Apariciones de una cabaña en el bosque project; the book he wrote in the process will see the light this year in the publishing house La uÑa RoTa.


The successes and soaring prestige of Ángela Segovia (Las Navas del Marqués, Ávila, 1987) acknowledge a poetic bravery that seems most extraordinary, because it is unconditional and immense. The worlds that she manages to build in her poems are of inexplicable strength, although they are also, deep down, testament to a frailty. This is what we find in Mi paese salvaje, her new book. We have mentioned courage because everything that happens in her words, with her words or through her words happens in part thanks to linguistic decisions that will undoubtedly bring about some form of rejection in some readers: the deliberate ungrammaticality, the defective concordances, those interferences from other languages ​​that, more than lexical or morphological borrowings, are in fact real excursions into other tongues, other systems, other traditions. The freedom of Ángela Segovia’s poetry is literally radical, genetic. She goes beyond playing with the font and the layout..., she also plays with the “typos” (which, of course, are not typos). Through many elements that include a deeply buried humour that is impossible to classify, a hallucinated beauty is achieved that also dialogues with the poetic tradition, with ancient lyrical traditions. All this conjures up a voice, a sensitivity, and a way of looking at the world that surely destine her to elevate, define and condition the best Spanish poetry of the coming decades.

 

She obtained the Premio Nacional [National Poetry Award] in the category of young poetry with La curva se volvió barricada, an acknowledgment that was later reaffirmed with Amor divino (2018). In 2020 she published a poem that was originally included in Amor divino, but it ended up asking for a book of its own: Pusieron debajo de mi mare un magüey. We like them all, but none moved us as much as Mi paese salvaje did: reading it and contemplating the exciting world that is conjured up before our eyes, we feel that something is finally happening in our poetry: that is all that needs to be said.

 

Juan Marqués, for Las librerías recomiendan

More about the poet

Poetry

  1. Untitled / Sin título

  2. THE EYELASHES AND THE BIRDS / LAS PESTAÑAS Y LOS PÁJAROS

  3. AN EYELASH AGAIN / OTRA VEZ UNA PESTAÑA

  4. darkness makes clouds of smoke / la oscuridad hace humareda

  5. / (Untitled)