Anxia
With Anxia, I obtained the highest of the prizes I have been awarded: the “Roís de Corella” of poetry in Valencian of the Literary Awards “Ciutat de València” in 2000. It was also published by Bromera, the publishing house par excellence as far as Valencian literature is concerned. There are two sections of the book that I particularly like: “Xiixia” and “Assaig de silenci” [“Essay of Silence”]. I wrote the second one in September in Caudiel, when my father was undergoing medical tests to diagnose him with what the specialists said was leukemia; they are desolate poems, where through silence I was looking for an exemplary silence. In contrast, “Xiixia” (a word that is not Valencian… nor terrestrial…; in theory, it is a term from the planet Ummo that means “to love sexually”) was a kind of catharsis in the face of the hopelessness of love.
