Latin America.- The Juan Ramón Jiménez Ibero-American Poetry Prize will be the best gifted in the world of Letters

HUELVA, 15 (EUROPA PRESS)

The Juan Ramón Jiménez Ibero-American Poetry Prize presented its 42nd edition this Wednesday in Madrid with an act-tribute to Moguer’s Nobel Prize winner at the Telefónica Foundation. In this event, the vice president of the Huelva Provincial Council, Juan Antonio García, announced the increase in the prize money to 18,000 euros in this edition, and announced the commitment to increase it to 25,000 euros in 2023.

This, to “turn him into the best gifted and highest award in the Spanish language in the world so that it may be the reference for Ibero-American letters”, as indicated by the Provincial Council in a press release.

This year, the presentation of the award had a special character as it was preceded by the delivery of the legacy of the Nobel Prize in the Caja de las Letras of the Instituto Cervantes. Luis García Montero, poet and director of the center, has highlighted his “idea of ​​happy work: there are people who are lucky enough to dedicate themselves to their vocation and thus work becomes life.” Juan Ramón, he added, “turned his work into an ethical commitment.”

Representatives of the Fundación Casa Museo Zenobia-Juan Ramón Jiménez, and among them his great-niece, Carmen Hernández Pinzón, have deposited two first editions of the books Belleza (1917-1923) and Poesía (1917-1923) and some copies of the magazines Yes, Poetic Politics, Unity, Index and Present, in which Moguer’s Nobel acted as editor.

Hernández Pinzón has made a parallel between the mission of the Cervantes Institute and the poet’s vocation in his desire to “universalize our language and take it to the whole world.” And he added: “He took great care of his language, today so reviled by many people.”

Next, the Telefónica Foundation presented the XLII edition of the Juan Ramón Jiménez Ibero-American Poetry Prize, in a ceremony chaired by the vice president of the Huelva Provincial Council, Juan Antonio García; the mayor of Moguer and vice president of the Zenobia-Juan Ramón Jiménez Foundation, Gustavo Cuéllar, and Carmen Hernández-Pinzón, the Nobel Prize winner from Huelva; and presented by the journalist and writer Marta Fernández who has been accompanied by the poets Raquel Lanseros and Ignacio Vleming.

For his part, the mayor of Moguer has stressed that “being the land of a Nobel Prize has a pleasant burden, keeping alive the essence of the word and the verb.”

Juan Ramón Jiménez’s great-niece, together with the poets Raquel Lanseros and Ignacio Vleming, have established a colloquium in which they have recognized the influence and legacy of the Nobel Prize in language and poetry today.

Lanseros stressed that “Juan Ramón does not feel himself the owner of language. He pursued the beauty of truth. The one that is permanent. That is why it is modern, it is in a time that all times are.” Along these lines, Vleming added that the poet “does not stress language or put it in crisis; he seeks its essence, its marrow, the primordial meaning of the word. Juan Ramón Jiménez looked at the center of language,” he concluded.

ABOUT THE AWARD

The Juan Ramón Jiménez Ibero-American Poetry Prize was created in 1981 by the Huelva Provincial Council on the occasion of the centenary of the poet’s birth, with the aim of promoting and editing works by other authors within the Spanish-speaking framework, as well as recognizing and disseminating the Magisterium of the Mogueño poet, Nobel Prize Winner for Literature in 1956.

From then until today it has remained uninterrupted. The award-winning authors and books constitute, as recognized by specialized critics, one of the best anthologies of contemporary Spanish poetry. In them you will find examples of all the tastes, styles and tendencies of our lyric. From Cuba to Chile, passing through almost the entire national territory, participation is wide, especially between Spain and Hispanic America. It seems to recall the same itinerancy of our Nobel, a poet between two worlds.

From the provincial institution they have stressed that “there is no doubt about the acceptance and notoriety” of the Award with 41 uninterrupted editions. Hundreds of works presented each year and with a special impact in America. The authors awarded with the Juan Ramón already constitute a substantial part of the contemporary poetry written in Spanish of the last 41 years.