Thursday at Zenda. Thursday of poetry. Thursday, in this case, devoted to Canal, a cornerstone work in the career of the Andalusian writer Javier Fernández (Córdoba, 1971), originally published in 2016 and now revived, with a visual apparatus by Aitor Saraiba, under the auspices of the publishing house Letraversal. Between the elegiac chant and the meticulous study of that space that binds us to the beings we love —present in our lives or not—, Canal spills out in verses that sometimes flow into one another as part of the same enunciative river, and at other times encounter great obstacles to sustaining its advance: it is in those critical moments that Javier Fernández’s writing clings most to the affirmative powers of the imagination, the infinite ally of life.
The publisher itself notes, with regard to the book: “«My brother Miguel died on the 5 / of March, 1975, three weeks / before his sixth birthday. / He died past noon, it was / a cloudy morning and very windy». With these verses Canal opens, a long poem divided into sixty fragments and a coda, which investigates the consequences in the core of the family of the death of the elder brother.
La propia editorial apunta, a propósito del libro: “«Mi hermano Miguel murió el 5 / de marzo de 1975, tres semanas / antes de su sexto cumpleaños. / Murió pasado el mediodía, era / una mañana nublada y de mucho / viento». Con estos versos se abre
Canal
, un largo poema dividido en sesenta fragmentos y una coda,
que investiga las consecuencias en el núcleo familiar de la muerte del hermano mayor.
Esta edición especial de Canal reproduce la intervención artística, hasta ahora inédita, realizada por el ilustrador Aitor Saraiba en septiembre de 2016.
Asimismo, la editora Ángelo Néstore se refiere a Canal como “uno de los libros fundacionales de la literatura en español de nuestro siglo. No es posible entender la poesía contemporánea sin atravesar Canal“.
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Autor: Javier Fernández. Título: Canal. Editorial: Letraversal. Venta: Todos tus libros.