The poet Antonio Colinas wins the Fundación Jesús Serra Special Poetry Prize

"The Poetry Competition of the Fundación Jesús Serra (Grupo Catalana Occidente), ended the call for entries with wide participation in all the categories. "

Antonio Colinas was the winner of the 2nd edition of the Fundación Jesús Serra Special Poetry Award, which honours the career of a renowned author or writer. 

With prize money of €5,000, this Special category was created last year in the framework of the Fundación Jesús Serra Poetry Competition, an initiative that has more than a decade of experience promoting the poetic genre. Thus, the poet from Castile and Leon has been awarded a prize at the proposal of the contest's panel of judges, formed by the writers Elena Medel, Andrea Valbuena, Carlos Zanón, David Castillo and Ricardo Fernández Aguilera, for the outstanding quality of his poetic work as a whole.

Colinas (La Bañeza, León, 1946) is a poet, narrator, essayist and translator. In addition to the National Prize for Literature and the Reina Sofía Award for Ibero-American Poetry, his work has been highly acclaimed in Italy, where in 2019 he received the Dante Alighieri Prize.  "I think poetry is a vocational way of being in the world, always keeping in mind, as María Zambrano thought, that poetic reality not only encompasses the reality that exists and is, but also the one that has not yet happened and the one that is no longer " the poet stressed.

For their part, the judges highlighted "the trajectory of one of the most original poets and, in turn, traditional poets of Spanish Peninsular poetry, which stands out in both form and intimacy."

14th Fundación Jesús Serra Poetry Competition

The announcement of the winner of the Special Poetry Prize coincides with the closing of the call for the 14th Poetry Competition, an initiative that rewards the creation of a poem and is open to all age groups, both in Spanish and Catalan, to participate in the event. With a total of 1,255 works presented, from 32 countries, this edition has reached the maximum participation in its history. The event has three categories: category A (from 18 years of age) with a prize of €2,500; category B (aged between 14 and 17 years) with a prize of €1,500; category C (from 10 to 13 years of age) with a prize of €800; Worthy of note is that registration for categories B and C has doubled, while category A remains the most popular and represents 75% of the total entries.

The winners of the three categories for each of the two languages will be announced in June. You can follow all the latest news about the Competition on the Fundación Jesús Serra social media profiles with the hashtag #ConcursoPoesíaFJS or on the website https://www.fundacionjesusserra.org/concurso-poesia.

In its fourteenth edition, the prize is consolidated as unique in its genre, due to its high level of entries and international reach. In this regard, it should be emphasised that international poets sign 23% of the works presented to the competition, while the remaining 77% correspond to Spanish authors.

Following the legacy of Grupo Catalana Occidente's founder, Jesús Serra, the foundation of the insurance group works, among other areas of action, to promote the genre of poetry and culture in general. In addition to the Poetry Competition and the Special Poetry Prize, it is worth highlighting the project "Poetízate Poesía en la escuela" (Poetry in school), the result of an agreement signed with the ACEC (Catalonia Writers' Association) and with the collaboration of more than 30 schools. The programme presents poetry as a further tool of expression for young high school students, bringing literary gender closer to adolescents. It consists of hosting novel poetry recitals in schools by the poets Josep Pedals and David Castillo. Workshops cover different styles of poetic expression, from classical to trap and its characteristic musicality. 

Competition judges

The judging panel of the 14th Fundación Jesús Serra Poetry Competition and the Special Poetry Prize is formed of renowned writers and professionals from the world of culture, such as Elena Medel, Andrea Valbuena, and the writers Carlos Zanón, David Castillo and Ricardo Fernández Aguilera.

Andrea Valbuena graduated from the Complutense University of Madrid in English Studies and began writing poetry and shared her first poems by creating a still-active blog called Brevedad. Through social media, Andrea began to earn her place within literature and managed to self-edit two poetry collections. 

In 2016, she wrote Magoa and won the 1st Valparaiso Poetry Prize, which allowed her to publish her work for the first time. In 2018, she published her second poetry collection, Si el silencio tomara la palabra. In March 2020, she published her latest poetry collection, Lagrimacer o el acto de derramarse, this time with Verso y Cuento (Penguin Random House).

She has also collaborated in publications such as the Maremágnum magazine or Con Pluma y Plomo, by the Complutense University of Madrid, and in numerous events at national and international universities. With Elvira Sastre, she has taken poetry to classrooms throughout Spain, and has performed on several occasions in Latin America. 

Carlos Zanón is the author of several poetry books, of the novels Nadie ama a un hombre bueno, Tarde, mal y nunca, Brigada 21 prize for the Best First Novel of the Year, and finalist for the Silverio Cañada Memorial, Giallo e dell Noir (Italy), and Violeta Negra (France) awards; No llames a casa won the Valencia Negra prize for the Best Black Novel of the Year, and Yo fui Johnny Thunders won the Salamanca Negra prize, Novelpol and Dashiell Hammett, as well as the storybook Marley estaba muerto. With Taxi, he was established as one of the most important authors in Spanish literature. In 2019, he published Problemas de identidad, a continuation of the Carvalho series by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. His narrative work has been translated in the United States, Germany, France, Holland and Italy. He collaborates as a columnist and literary and musical critic in newspapers, magazines and cultural supplements.

Elena Medel is a writer from Cordoba particularly dedicated to the field of poetry. She has published the collections of poems Mi primer bikini (2002), which received the 2001 Andalusian Youth prize, awarded by the Andalusian Youth Institute; Tara (2006) and Chatterton (2014), which won the Loewe prize in their Young Creation category. She is also the author of the books Vacaciones (2004) and Un soplo en el corazón (2007). Her poems have been translated into German, Arabic, Armenian, Slovenian, Basque, French, English, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Swedish and Swahili. Her work appears in numerous recent poetry books. As a storyteller, her stories have also been published in various anthologies. In 2016, she received the Princess of Girona Foundation Arts and Letters Award.

David Castillo is a Catalan poet, founder in 1989 of the cultural supplement of the newspaper El Punt-Avui, after collaborating in major national newspapers and magazines during the eighties. He was director of the magazine Lletra de canvi for eight years and served as a professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona for five years.  He has organized different poetry cycles and was founder and director of the Barcelona Poetry Week in 1997.  In September 2017, he took over as chairman of the ACEC (Catalan Writers' Association).  He has the highest distinctions in Catalan literature, from the Sant Jordi prize for novels, the Carles Riba for poetry, the Crexells for the best novel of the year and different Atlántida awards as a literary writer. Some of his most noteworthy works include Game over, El cielo de infierno, Espalda desnuda, Sin mirar atrás, Downtown, Poesía, Contracultura, Barcelona and El túnel del tiempo.

Ricardo Fernández Aguilà, born in Barcelona, has been a professor and writer. A graduate of Hispanic Philology, he is the author of Un Fernandes entre banderas (2014), Un profesor se despide (2017) and online stories Un entender no entendiendo (2012-2013).

He has also done introductory studies and translations in the books El diálogo como el inconsciente: Antonio Machado by Antoni Pascual Piqué (2009) and 32 poemas by Màrius Torres. His project El despertar de la conciencia a través de la poesía (The awakening of the consciousness through poetry) has travelled to cities such as Barcelona and Madrid in search of the inspiration of poetry for the different stages of life. For more than forty years, he has been a secondary school and baccalaureate teacher, as well as a translator, especially of children's literature.