Maria Antònia Massanet

Aus de ramat

INFORMATION

According to the author: 

"The collective names of animals had been around me for a long time like flocks, spreading out and gathering in my thoughts. When I discovered that, in English, there were many more and that they were highly lyrical, this universe widened and I knew I had the seed of a poetry book. This should naturally grow out of another fascination I had long ago with the choreographic flight of swallows and starlings. I write until I have an idea to search for. I'm not a graphomaniac, I think of writing as research. With Aus de ramat, I found out what to do it about, but I also didn't want to reduce myself to the collective behaviour of birds and I wanted to extend it to mammals, fish and even fireflies and jellyfish and, of course, humans, presented in the ambivalent form of plagues and rescuers. Each animal group helped me to explore different themes at the same time, and the collection of poems ends up being a kaleidoscope of fragmented images, of a reality so multiple and complex that it reveals itself as a fragment of everything that could become. There is also a lot of pain in this book, hence the dryness, the economy of words, the emptiness and silence. Hence, too, the need of the group, the fear of loneliness. And at the same time the poems want to be a nest and a burrow where to let themselves be welcomed and the hand that opens offering warmth for those who want to read them. »