Poet Lluís Alpera buried in Alicante yesterday

Yesterday Lluís Alpera was buried in Alicante. He was one of the veterans of Catalan poetry in Valencia and the founder of the Department of Catalan Philology at the University of Alicante. Born in Valencia during an aggressive bomb raid carried out by Franco’s troops in 1938, Alpera was a decisive figure in Catalan poetry from the 50s to the present day, as well as being important for the consolidation of the language in the southern-most regions of the linguistic domain.

Alpera’s poetry is a poetry of great contrasts, of crossroads, brimming over with sensuality. We could say that he is the most abrupt, lyrical and irrepressible of the poets who followed in Vicent Andrés Estellés’ wake.

Exactly one year ago, the publisher Onada Edicions released a collection of his poetry from 1963 to 2017 in Ulisses i la Mar dels Sargassos (Ulysses and the Sargasso Sea), an extraordinary adventure that the Alicante poet himself compared to the famous Odyssey.

Alpera was influenced by Espriu, Quasimodo, Carles Riba and Ausiàs March, before his vision evolved to take on the sensualism of Joanot Martorell, which, along with his own passionate dynamism, was to produce one of the most provocative voices of Catalan poetry. And like most Catalan authors, he wasn’t given enough recognition.