Perhaps for the authors of the star system a fourth edition of his book is nothing more than a pleasant celebration, but not a news item that occupies headlines and pages in the media, as it is part of their daily lives. However, if she is a Majorcan poet of a certain age and she did not start publishing at the age of 30 – something that is increasingly common – the issue becomes relevant. This is the case of Antonina Canylles (Palma, 1942), who began to self-publish her own poems in the 80s and who now, with her leading label, Catalan Lapis lazuli Editorialreaches a fourth edition with its anthology Whores and pampered.
Taking into account that he is not part of any capelleta and does not have a long career full of awards and recognitions, such success is even more surprising. The editor of Lapislàtzuli, Jon López de Viñaspre, there is no justification for it. «Antonina Canyelles is a poet who sells books as if she were a novelist. She is a writer who has always lived on the margins, like poppies, and yet he does not stop adding followers to his cause. They have not given him great awards, but I always say that this is his great reward: an army of readers that grows without stopping,” he says.
Canyelles herself can’t believe it either. «You never know why one book sells more than another, but maybe Whores and pampered has worked so well because of the good work of the publisher and because it has moved a lot between book clubs and institutes. Another, The dune and the waterfall, was published by Editions 62 and it went quite unnoticed. In the end, the big publishers don’t take as much care of the books they publish,” he points out. Likewise, Canyelles acknowledges that he especially enjoys visiting institutes. «I am very surprised that fourteen-year-old teenagers read poetry and like it. The first institute I visited was Berenguer d’Anoia (Inca), nine years ago, at the request of the Catalan teacher Rafael Crespíwho already told me that he had read my first book, Consequence notebooks. Fifteen days ago, Peter Joan Martorell He invited me to participate in the cycle he organizes at the Lloseta Library and it was full. There two young people approached me who coincidentally met me on that visit to Inca. “It made me very excited,” he says.
For López de Viñaspre, Canyelles’ poetry “can be understood by a intellectual and a illiterate, because it goes directly to people’s most vital organs. The author agrees, although she admits that she does not know how to take it. «It is true that he usually tells me that I have readers who have never read poetry, I suppose it is a compliment, that they read what they want. My poetry may be easy to read, although most people tell me that they laugh a lot at my poems, the truth is that, if you read them twice, they are not as funny. In any case, it is not so easy for me to write them. But, as they say, it is better to be funny than not to be funny, she says.
As if that were not enough, the freak Antonina Canyelles is already crossing the literary terrain and will even reach the big screen with two documentaries that are underway: one by Xavier Perez and another directed by the prestigious photographer Daniel Riera
2024-03-31 00:43:56
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