Carla Fajardo Martín
- Spain -
Born in Barcelona in 1989 and surrounded by artists, she studied Hispanic Philology and a Master’s degree in Journalism and later completed a postgraduate degree in Artistic Mediation. She has worked as an audiovisual, digital, and cultural journalist in the media, especially at Diari Ara, and as a communications professional focused on the social economy. In the field of cultural mediation, she founded and coordinated the now-defunct local culture association Taller 131. She has also ventured into the theater world as a dramaturgy assistant.
In poetry, she has published Forats (Fonoll, 2017), awarded the Alella a Maria Oleart Prize; Limítrofes (Viena, 2019), recipient of the Martí Dot Prize; and Abastir-nos del desglaç de les boques dels amants (3i4, 2024), awarded the Senyoriu d’Ausiàs March Prize.
There are as many ways to define the word poetry as there are personal imaginaries. Poetry is a language that involves expressing, according to a rhythm, various themes, an idea or a feeling. That’s what the dictionary says. But to me, that expression feels very poor.
The art of poetry goes far beyond that. It gains value when it manages to break the boundaries that build a closed space—whether it be time, love, life, or even death. What good is it to have a beautiful, well-kept garden fenced all around? We can play with the rhythm of words, enrich our vocabulary with synonyms, with metaphors; play with punctuation marks and invent new words and new expressions. But what we cannot do is remain in a stage that simply embellishes our sensibility.
Since the earliest civilizations, poetry has taken shape. In Ancient Egypt, many texts already show a constant rhyme and a specific structure of verses. The Celts wrote their rituals and prayers in poetic form, because rhythm and repetition helped them memorize.
Writing poetry means describing the world and visualizing the research work of words and their associations. And if language is a fundamental pillar of any social structure, working it and turning it into poetry means questioning stereotypes and holding the will to change our idea of society. In short, it is about deconstruction.
What is necessary is to undo the single meaning, to give way to new beginnings and open windows that look out onto the garden in front of the house—if there is indeed a house; to transmute words, as Mireia Calafell writes: “You sleep and do not see the verbs parading / pebbles that flow / into other seas / you will see, you will do, you will have, you will live, you will be.” To achieve this, one must take risks, up to the edge of the abyss. It is essential to recognize these lines in order to transgress them. Carla quotes Eva Baltasar: “the limit can be lived, vertical as never before, at the edge of nothingness.”
Everything that happens within an enclosure does nothing but perpetuate an endogenous inertia that blocks life. Love surely as well. And since tradition, custom, and “it has always been done this way” have been managed by the dominant power of masculine discourse, a woman poet is the best possible agent to write deconstruction. Sappho, Judith Butler, Adrienne Rich, or Virginie Despentes may serve as guiding lights, but around them lies an infinity of women who have sought and still seek to unravel the bonds of rigid content, who have always done so and who have been aggressed with the stealthy weapon of silence.
And among this tangle of comments, thoughts, and intentions, the figure of Carla Fajardo emerges. She does so through a body of work that is increasingly consolidating a specific way of living, full of questions and uncomfortable in everyday life. Three books, all three award-winning, which clearly delineate her concerns at each moment. From the starting point, which I outlined at the beginning, Carla opts for confrontation with everything she does not recognize as immutable.
It would be absurd to start from the roof of the house—if there is a house—so her first poetic battles are waged in Forats (Holes, Alella Poetry Prize 2018, published by Fonoll). There are connecting holes, holes of absence, holes as space-time bridges, holes of exclusion, holes that are voids, holes of silence, even holes of love. From this exploration, Carla makes poetry that she structures with care.
Taking advantage of her discourse at odds with simplicity, the author places herself at the very edge of everything that worries and hurts her. She writes Limítrofes (Borderlines, Martí Dot Poetry Prize, Sant Feliu de Llobregat 2018, published by Viena Edicions). From her condition as a woman, a woman who lives amid the dust of a city’s aggressiveness that suffocates and mistreats, she proposes that we reach the utmost extreme of every experience. Gender is a starting point and a fundamental mode of expression, just as her belonging to a specific social class is. She studies language, works with meanings, and releases contents discreetly, but with the drive that inevitably sparks a reaction in the reader. Weaknesses and contradictions appear, and they must be fought. Sex and relationships become elements to live and push to the limit, almost never responding to any existing stereotype. “Questions make noise, and noise bothers”, Carla cites Maria Cabrera. It is a book of rebellion, of struggle, of overcoming the guilt generated by this courageous approach to all limits. Antònia Vicens writes: “I cannot live among shadows, they suffocate me, nor among candles either; but with guilt, I can sleep.” And above all, as I already said, Carla Fajardo writes from a clear gender perspective.
Perhaps because voids and limits have been anguishing, or simply to explore other facets of the language that shapes us, she writes Abastir-nos del desglaç de les boques dels amants (To Supply Ourselves with the Thaw from Lovers’ Mouths, 54th Senyoriu d’Ausiàs March Poetry Prize, published by Tres i Quatre).
I belong to a generation that was born with Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving under its arm and magazines with nude women in their centerfolds hidden under the bed. It’s obvious that many things have changed, but even so, it makes perfect sense to ask ourselves what it means to love, how we love, when we love, and whom or what we love. We can do it alone, or we can share it with whoever and however many we want. Everything is possible, but what matters is to ask ourselves again and again what it means to love. Marina Garcés has worked along these lines in her latest book, La passió dels estranys (The Passion of Strangers), where she asks about friendship, which in my view is a way of loving. Among other things, she writes that her “book aims to traverse the margins of writing about friendship, tracing its conceptual threads, but also delving into its voids.” And what if this were also Carla’s aim with her three poetry collections? And what if these points of connection between the two authors show us a way to fight ignorance and female invisibility? In any case, it is a matter of urgency—not to fall, or to make use of the fall itself to love, as Mireia Calafell has already written: “So close to the ground, we will not fall anymore. And to love is to fall.”
Written by Miquel Santaeulàlia / Translated by Pau Domènech
Poetry
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When the earth breaks / (Untitled)
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Bunker man / (Untitled)
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There are no entries matching your criteria / (Untitled)
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Bird observatory / (Untitled)
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Battlefield / Camp de batalla
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Bastard Ulisses / Ulisses cabró
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Airbnb / Airbnb
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Outside / El defora
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In dry land / A secà
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Words kill / La paraula mata
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Stigmergy / Estigmèrgia
