About the Book
Manuel Forcano, the outstanding Catalan poet, is a great traveller, and the poems in this, his first full-length book in English translation, embrace the cities, the landscapes and the people of the Middle East. Drawn from his four most recent collections, these poems use geographical and historical references to deepen and inform the narrative, and also to lay before the reader the idea of the continuity, over many centuries, of human love and desire. The beauty, joy, grief and tenderness in these poems are universal and belong to every kind of human affection – indeed Forcano has been described by the Catalan journalist and academic Pere Ballart as ‘our foremost love poet’.
Anna Crowe’s beautiful translations demonstrate a remarkable understanding of, and sensitivity to, Forcano’s poetry, so much so that one might say that Maps of Desire represents the perfect union of poet and translator.
About the Author :
Manuel Forcano (born Barcelona, 1968) has a PhD in Semitic Philology. He completed his studies in Israel, Syria and Egypt, and has worked as a lecturer in Hebrew and Aramaic at the University of Barcelona (1996-2004). He has translated literary works from Hebrew (Yehuda Amichai, Pinhas Sade, Ronny Someck, Amos Oz), Arabic (The Travels of Ibn Battuta), from French (Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien, and the complete Catalan version of The Travels of Marco Polo), from English (Pharos and Pharillon, an Evocation of Alexandria by E. M. Forster), and Italian Baroque opera libretti. Published anthologies of his own poems include Corint (Corinth, winner of the Barcelona Jocs Florals Prize, 2000), Com un persa (Like a Persian, the Tivoli International Prize, 2002), El tren de Bagdad (The Baghdad Train, Carles Riba Prize, 2003), and Llei d’estrangeria (Law Governing Aliens, Qwerty Prize, 2008). He worked as a researcher and playwright at the Jordi Savall Early Music International Centre Foundation from 2004-2016, and from 2016-2018 was Director of the Institut Ramon Llull, Barcelona. Anna Crowe, born in Plymouth in 1945, is a poet and translator and the author of four poetry collections in English: Figure in a Landscape (2010), a Poetry Book Society Choice which was translated into Catalan and published in a bilingual edition as Paisatge amb figura (Ensiola, 2011) and which also received the Callum MacDonald Memorial Award in 2011; Skating Out of the House (1997), A Secret History of Rhubarb (2006), Punk with Dulcimer (2006); one in Spanish / English bilingual edition: L’ànima del teixidor (2000); and one in Catalan: Punk con salterio, translated by Joan Margarit (2008). She has translated three of Joan Margarit’s collections: Tugs in the Fog (Bloodaxe, 2006, a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation); Barcelona, amor final (2007, Catalan / Castilian / English trilingual edition); Strangely Happy (Bloodaxe, 2011). She has also translated Anna Aguilar-Amat’s Música i escorbut (Blesok, 2006); with Iolanda Pelegrí, an anthology of Catalan poetry, Miralls d’aigua (Light Off Water, Scottish Poetry Library / Carcanet Press, 2006); and, for Arc Publications Six Catalan Poets edited by Pere Ballart (2013), and Peatlands by the Mexican poet Pedro Serrano (2014).
Along with several other writers, she was a founder member of StAnza, the Scottish international poetry festival, and was artistic director during its first seven years. She has twice won the Peterloo Open Poetry competition, and in 2005 won a travelling scholarship from the Society of Authors.
