Francesc Parcerisas (Begues, Baix Llobregat, 1944) is a poet, translator and literary critic. He teaches in the Department of Translation and Interpretation at the Autonomous University of Barcelona where he is deputy director and head of the Translation Department. As an outstanding member of the 1970s literary generation, he has published inter alia the following collections of poems: Homes que es banyen (Men Bathing – 1966), L'edat d'or (The Golden Age – 1984), Focs d'octubre (October Fires – 1992) and Natura morta amb nens (Still Life with Children – 2000). As a poet he has received numerous prizes, for example the 1966 Carles Riba Prize, the 1983 Critics’ Prize for Catalan Poetry and, also in 1983, the Generalitat (Government) of Catalonia Prize for Catalan Literature.

The critics consider L’edat d’or as one of the poetry collections that marked its period. In L’edat d’or, Francesc Parcerisas has managed to write, in an extraordinary and remarkable way, what Dolors Oller calls "a poetry of everyday experience’ Also noteworthy is the publication of his poetic work between 1965 and 1983, in Triomf del present (Triumph of the Present – 1991), which received the 1992 Lletra d’Or Prize.

Francesc Parcerisas has translated a great number of works and has been recognised in this sphere with two major prizes for Poetic Translation – the 1992 Serra d’Or Critic’s Prize for his Catalan version of Seamus Heaney’s The Haw Lantern (La llanterna de l'arç), the 2001 Cavall Verd-Rafael Jaume Prize for his translation of Ezra Pound’s A Draft of XXX Cantos (Un esborrany de XXX Cantos). He writes for several cultural and literary reviews and some of his articles and essays were published in the critical collection L’objecte immediat (The Immediate Object – 1991). He has been president of the Association of Catalan-Language Writers and is a member of its Advisory Commission. He was director of the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes (Institute of Catalan Letters) between 1998 and 2004. He is presently Coordinator of Books and Reading Year 2005.


Documentation: Lena PaĂĽls.
Update: Xulio Ricardo Trigo.
Translation: Julie Wark.
Photograph: AELC archive.