Meritxell Cucurella-Jorba is the digraph tx of desitx (desire) and a poet, playwright, translator, and cultural activist.

With a degree in Catalan Philology from the University of Barcelona (UB) and a master’s degree in Film and Television Writing from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), she trained as a playwright at the Sala Beckett school of dramaturgy with José Sanchis Sinisterra, among others.

In 2008, she devised and founded (H)original, which has been and is a venue of reference. She has organised risky poetry festivals of high creative voltage: (per)verses (2005), PARNÀS (2008-2011), and Delicadeses. Art de tros (2008-2016), which have been highly praised and awarded prizes on more than one occasion.

She has published poetry, theatre, and stories for children as well as translating poetry and fiction. In addition to the Young Creators Prize and the Pollença Prize for Poetry, she was also awarded the prestigious Jordi Domènech Prize for Poetry Translation for her rendering of Alda Merini’s Clinica dell’abbandono (Clínica de l’abandó) and, in 2020, she won the Premi Màrius Torres de Poesia with La volumetria del neguit. Her work has been translated into Italian, French, English, Ukrainian, and Turkish.

She has given recitals throughout the Països Catalans and Europe (Sarajevo, Rome, Porto, Berlin, Lisbon, Luxemburg, Livorno, Bilbao, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odessa, Ternopil, Lviv, and elsewhere). In 2001, she participated in the Biennale of Young Artists of Europe and the Mediterranean (Sarajevo) and, in 2003, in the Roma Poesia Poetry Slam in Rome, in 2006 in the Internationale Slam! Revue, of the Internationales Literaturfestival in Berlin and, in 2008, she was one of the poets of the Le Printempsdes Poètes in Luxemburg, and also of the Poesiefestival in Berlin. In 2011, she gave recitals around Ukraine and took part in the International Literary Festival (Lviv). In 2019 she participated in the Istanbul Poetry and Literature Festival.

She has created several poetry shows, among them Punxa’m and AMOR. Arrels, branques i fulles, as well as working with numerous musicians and singers.

She has left her fuchsia or red stamp on every stage, a flash of dynamite become word, gesture, or silence, a spark of incorrectness and joy of being alive. She has an alter ego: the Santíssima Marededéu del Barranc Roig.

She is a member of the Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (Association of Catalan Language Writers AELC).

 

Web page: Sara Serrano for AELC.
Documentation: Author’s personal files.
Front page photograph: Xavier Minguella.