Aurora Luque, National Poetry Prize for the most Greek contemporary Spanish poets

The writer and translator from Almeria receives a prize of 20,000 euros for her latest book “Finished Number of Years”, published by the young publishing house Lleida Milenio

Her biography could begin like this: Aurora Luque was born in Almeria in 1962. She graduated in classical philology from the University of Granada. He lives in Málaga and teaches ancient Greek there. We could put Aurora Luque like this, but it’s best in the middle: is it? one of the greatest poets of the 80s, 90s, 2000.. Plus an elegant and accurate Greek translator. And also a whitewater and Mediterranean navigator. But poetry is the deepest expedition of Luque – the former director of the 27 Generation Cultural Center – and for which she received the 2022 National Poetry Award, donated 20,000 euros and convened by the Ministry of Culture.

The jury says: “High lyrical depth, exciting, demanding, transparent, makes the author’s unmistakable voice one of the great poets of our time.” Some of his books belong to the heir the best-established titles in poetry of the last 30 years: hornbeam night (City of Melilla Award, 1992), temporary (1998) dear comrades (Fray Luis de Leon Award, 2003), Epicurus’s nap (Generation Award 27, 2008) or Gavieras (2019 Loewe Award). His translations of Catullus, Sappho, Greek erotic poetry, Rene Vivien and Louis Lab are also part of his intense work.

1st National Poetry Award for his latest book: finite number of years, published by the young publisher Lleida Milenio, coordinated by the poet Josep Maria Rodríguez, who has so far published only seven titles. The jury says about this work by Luque: “It is book of joy: beauty, words, sensuality, life in general. A song to the Mediterranean and to the love of the Greek tradition that looks at the universe of the past to understand the present, using the resources of tradition and the forms of antiquity to interpret our days. A classic mosaic that we are recovering today and which brings us back into the past ”.

Professor Jaime Siles says that Aurora Luque is the most modern Greek writer. “And if someone asked me to describe his work – explains Siles in the introduction to this volume – I would use one word: poikilaa Greek term equivalent to what the writers of the Golden Age called blend, or combination of genressubspecies and more diverse paragens ”.

The writing of Aurora Luque is therefore a precise atlas understand the passage of ancient traditions in the mechanics of modernity. To know that we are who we are because there are traces of these men and women on our way. And we are fragments of other passages. in line Home alone Luque writes: “AndI am just fragments, loose pieces of myself, / but not the hand that connects me. / On the screen, the world / yells at me quarterly, / joyfully, bitterly, / electrically luminous / its stupid, refreshing joy. / I am only my slits./ Also the world is only its rifts“.