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, he 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-Rafel 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 written several essays on translation, such as Traducció, edició, ideologia (Translation, Edition, Ideology - 2009) and Sense mans. Metàfores i papers sobre la traducció (Hands Free. Metaphors and Papers on Translation), awarded the Premi Internacional d'Assaig Josep Palau i Fabre (2013).

In 2015 he was honoured with the National Prize for Culture from the Generalitat (Government) of Catalunya, and in 2018 he received the Jaume Fuster Prize of the Writers in Catalan Language.

He has been director of the the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes (Institute of Catalan Letters, ILC – 1998-2004) and from 2010 to 2016 he was its dean. He was the Coordinator of Books and Reading Year 2005 for the Generalitat (Government) of Catalunya.

He has been vicepresident in Catalonia of the Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (Association of Catalan Language Writers, AELC – 1991-1997), its president (1998-1999) and he currently is a member of its Advisory Commission.

He is an honorary member of AELC (Association of Catalan Language Writers).

Documentation: Lena Paüls.
Photographs: © Carme Esteve/AELC. AELC's archive.