Lola Tórtola won the Miguel Hernández 2024 National Young Poetry Prize, for The gods destroyed (Rialp Editions). The jury highlighted his work for having “a personal, strong voice, loaded with suggestive images” and for “the intensity and emotion of passionate language”. “As a travelogue, the author displays a capacity to miss and be strange and surprises with his risky engagement in a poetry of critical consciousness of an annihilated culture,” he added.
The committee also assessed that The gods destroyed constitutes “a lament for a generation which has encountered a new civilization where its expectations have no place. A round book, which sings a heartbreaking song and shows the poetic magic of Lola Tórtola. The prize, awarded by the Ministry of Culture, is worth 30,000 euros.
The publisher of the work, Ediciones Rialp, describes the copy as “a first collection of poems which must be understood as a travel book, the poetic result of his journey through Italy, Grace and central Europe “. It is divided into two parts. The first, which is the title of the volume, reflects the “unusual scenario” that the author and his traveling companions experienced in these territories and ended up being “the image of an abolished Arcadia” and “the awareness that “life is much more than themselves as they learn to stop being young.
The second part, A deified destructionis a reflection “on the transition from lived experiences to a reality very far from the promises and expectations of youth”. The poet succeeds Mayte Gómez Molina for the prize and joins a list of names that includes Ismael Ramos, María Elena Higueruelo Illana, Alba Cid, Ángela Segovia, Xaime Martínez and Berta García Faet, among others.
Lola Tórtola (Murcia 1997) graduated in medicine. He studied at the University of Murcia, La Sapienza University of Rome and Cornenius University of Bratislava. He currently works as a resident in plastic, aesthetic and reconstructive surgery in a hospital in Madrid.
In her aspect as a writer, she has received several distinctions in literary competitions, such as second prize of the Prix Adonais with his work The gods destroyed in 2022. “For his fresh and yet mature voice with which he confronts recent memories and the awareness of a European cultural crisis experienced during his formative, demystifying, warm and free travels,” argued his jury.
