The latest book by poet Joan Margarit is Per tenir casa cal guanyar la guerra [To have a home you have to win the war], Proa, 2018, a book of childhood and early youth memoirs. A few weeks ago, the poet went to Lleida and for the New Barcelona Post we talked with him. To accompany this video interview, we include a fragment where Margarit reflects on his poetics in the prologue to the first edition of Tots els poemes 1975-2011, Barcelona 2011, Grup 62, La butxaca:
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"I have always been aware that, for me, poetry extended throughout life. Haste, then, has not been part of my relationship with the poem. The final judgment will be made by time and, unlike the final judgments of religions, I will not know the result. My only task - and it is not small - is the day-to-day with poems with no more justification, pleasure or compensation than to seek them, compose them and write them. None of us count for much, even those who seem to count for a lot, but we can be saved by the same thing that, curiously, can also save the poem: its honest intensity."