Review

 
Montserrat Abelló is a Catalan poet, translator and feminist militant. She began her public career when she was more than forty years old and after spending twenty years in exile.

She is the author of twelve collections of poems, plus literary criticism articles and many translations of women's voices, from Catalan into English and from English into Catalan.

Her poetry is mostly written in free verse, underlying the importance of  rhythm andthe  weight of words; she also wrote Haikus. She deals with love, the passing of time, the death of loved ones and creation itself.

She was an active feminist and  took part in all kinds of initiatives to recover forgotten female voices and to create links between writers. Her tireless work earned her, among other recognitions, the Creu de Sant Jordi (1998) and the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes (2008). 

Activities

Justifications

• Poet, translator, literary critic, feminist and cultural militant.
• Her poetry, in free verse, is about love, death, solitude, loss and the passage of time based on simple and everyday elements and situations.
• It also reflects on the very creation, the strength of words and the invisibility of women’s voices.
• Translator into Catalan of numerous English-language writers, such as Agatha Christie, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Adrienne Rich.
• Translator into English and international disseminator of Catalan poets like Maria Àngels Anglada, Margarita Ballester, Rosa Fabregat, Maria Mercè Marçal, Maria Oleart, Olga Xirinacs and herself.
• She maintains Catalan as a language of creation despite Francoism, and her exile in France, the United Kingdom and finally Chile.
• Author of twelve collections of poems, some of them have been set to music by Mirna and Celeste Alías.
• Awarded with the Creu de Sant Jordi for her work as a translator (1998) and the Premi d’Honor de les Lletres Catalanes (2008).

Biography

Montserrat Abelló was born in Tarragona in 1918, and during his childhood she travelled widely due to the profession of his father, who was a naval engineer. During the Republic, her family settled in Barcelona and began her studies of Philosophy and Letters, but she could not finish them because she had to go into exile with his father: first in France, then in England, where he did aid work for the collective of refugees, and finally in Chile, where she lived for 20 years. There she met her husband, whom she married in 1943 and had two sons and a daughter. In Valparaíso she worked in her father's company and then as an English teacher at the Swiss school in Santiago de Chile.  
She did not return to Catalonia until the 1960s and found a job as a teacher at the Cultural Institution of the CIC in Barcelona (where she worked until she retired). It was on her return from exile, at the age of forty-four, that she published her first poetic collection, Daily Life, with a prologue by Joan Oliver, and which saw the light in 1963. She also resumed her studies, truncated by the civil war, and finished them at the age of 57. 

Her output, both literary and as a translator, intensified in the 1980s, when she continued to publish collections and translated Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, among others, into Catalan. In 1993 she presented the volume Cares en la finestra, an anthology of English-speaking poets. She also translated Catalan poets into English, such as Maria-Mercè Marçal, Margarita Ballester and Maria Oleart. 
She took part in multiple acts and initiatives, as the dramatized conference cycles connecting creators of different disciplines – which crystallized in the publication Cartografies del desig (1998) and Memòries de l'Aigua (1999) – or the elaboration, with other fellow women, of an anthology of female poetic voices in Catalan entitled Paisatge emergent, (1999). 

She died in 2014, aged 96, months after the publication of her book Any del parlar concís, her translation into English (with Noèlia Díaz-Vicedo) of Raó del cos, de Marcial and her self-translation, also into English, of an anthology of love poems. 
Among other awards, she received the Creu de Sant Jordi and the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes. 
Her poetry largely embraces Plath's or Sexton's free verse and always attaches great importance to rhythm and musicality. She also cultivates the Haikus, a verse of Japanese tradition, which is very meagre. From simple, everyday things it deals with themes such as love, death, loneliness and loss. She also reflects on the very creation, on the strength of words and on the invisibility of the voice of women. 
We can find some of her poems translated in Lyrikline, 06/06/2023. https://www.lyrikline.org/en/authors/montserrat-abello  

The author has been included on the website of  AELC, 06/06/2023, https://www.escriptors.cat/autors/abellom/biografia-montserrat-abello , of Lletra , 06/06/2023, https://lletra.uoc.edu/ca/autor/montserrat-abello  and of the Enciclopèdia Catalana, 06/06/2023, https://www.enciclopedia.cat/gran-enciclopedia-catalana/montserrat-abello-i-soler 

Works

Bibliography

Bargalló, Josep (2012). “Exercicis de mètrica: Montserrat Abelló, el haikú i el tanka”, 07-05-2023, https://josepbargallo.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/exercicis-de-metrica-montserrat-abello-el-haiku-i-el-tanka/ 

Carné, M. Elena (2007). “Montserrat Abelló, passió per traduir”. Quaderns. Revista de Traducció 14, pp. 183-196.

Anglada, M. Àngels (1986). “Pròleg”, in Montserrat Abelló. El blat del temps. Barcelona: Columna, pp. 9-12 .

Izquierdo, Oriol (2002). “Dins meu que crema”, in Montserrat Abelló. Al cor de les paraules. Obra poètica 1963-2002. Barcelona: Proa, pp. 11-31.

Marçal, Maria Mercè (1990). “Pròleg”, in Montserrat Abelló Foc a les mans. Barcelona: Columna, pp. 7-17.

Nadal, Marta (1998). “Montserrat Abelló, una mirada sense límits”, Serra d'Or, 463-464 (juliol-agost), pp. 46-49.

Oliver, Joan (1963). “Pròleg”, dins Montserrat Abelló. Vida diària. Barcelona: Joaquim Horta.

Pessarrodona, Marta (1981). “La força del silenci”, dins Montserrat Abelló. Vida diària. Paraules no dites. Barcelona: La Sal, 1981, pp. 7-10.

Torrents, Ricard (2006). “La poeta traductora Montserrat Abelló”, Quaderns. Revista de Traducció 13, pp. 95-103.
Valls i Pozo, Jordi (2009). Retrats: Montserrat Abelló. Barcelona: AELC. [edicio pdf]  

WEBSITES

(S)avis. Montserrat Abelló. TV3, 25-05-2023,

https://www.ccma.cat/tv3/alacarta/savis/montserrat-abello/video/5235931/

L’hora del lector. Montserrat Abelló. TV3, 25-05-2023,

https://www.ccma.cat/tv3/alacarta/lhora-del-lector/lhora-del-lector-capitol-33/video/5914426/ 

Montserrat Abelló. Poetàrium. Institut Ramon Llull, 25-05-2023,

https://poetarium.llull.cat/poetarium/detall.cfm/ID/26819/CAT/montserrat-abello.html

LletrA, Montserrat Abelló, 07-05-2023, https://lletra.uoc.edu/ca/autora/montserrat-abello 

Música de poetes, 07-05-2023, https://www.musicadepoetes.cat/poeta?autor=670 

Viu la poesia, propostes didàctiques, 07-05-2023, http://www.viulapoesia.com/pagina_6.php?tipus=1&subtipus=2&itinerari=11&idpoema=592Montserrat Abelló at the Association of catalan Language Writers (AELC) in English, Catalan and spanish

Didactic approach

The author can be dealt with in the first ESO cycle for rhythm, rhyme, simple structures such as haiku and tanka. Some of her poems are suitable for Early and Primary Education, for themes and for form. 
In second cycle of ESO in history of Catalan literature and as a reading aloud. 
In High School, in Catalan and Universal Literature. 
She translated into English and from English; therefore, she could be used in  English language subject, both in Primary and Secondary Schools and in the Official Languages Schools. 
Her musical poems can be worked on in Music. 
The poem Parlen les dones can be used to deal with women's authority and the claim of women's voices:

https://www.catorze.cat/biblioteca/parlen-dones-15883/

Her life experience during the civil war and exile can be worked on from the numerous interviews that were made to her in different subjects and levels. 
 
She has also poems about the experience of exile and can be used to explain the history of Spain.  
Her poems on the female condition, motherhood, death of her young child with Down syndrome, etc. can be used in Ethics. 

Documents