María Jesús Pato (Chus Pato) received the 2024 National Poetry Prize for her work Sonora (Xerais)The prize, awarded by the Ministry of Culture, is worth 30,000 euros. The jury chose his text for “being an experimental work, an expansive and concentrated conversation between the poem and death, the one that, after the mother’s orphanhood, draws the reader into the abysses of his own lineage.”
The committee also noted that his collection of poems “creates textual spaces full of leaks: rhetorical, semantic, capable of hybridizing different codes in which all its inextinguishable sonic power is displayed.” In Sonora“Personal, social and political memory whispers the multiple voices of one of the most daring contemporary poets,” they considered. In addition, they recognize that the book “shows the approach to poetry as a transformative element of language.”
The artist succeeds Yolanda Castaño, honored in 2023; and joins a list that includes other names such as Miren Agur Meabe, Aurora Luque, Olga Novo, Pillar Pallarés and Antònia Vicens.
Fundamental author of contemporary Galician poetry
Chus Pato, born in Orense in 1955, writes in Galician. His first poems appeared in the magazine Writing (1984). They were later included in other publications such as Lights of Galiza, Festa da Palabra Silenda, Andaina, Gume Ólisbos, Revista das Letras, Dorna And Orion’s Key, as well as in the books published by the Condado Poetry Festival. Sonora is the most recent collection of poems by the Galician writer and academic, whose work has been published by the Xerais label; and translated into Spanish by Gonzalo Hermo for the Ultramarinos publishing house.
The poet is the author of several titles for which she has received other awards such as the Spanish National Critics Award, in the Galician poetry category. Her poems have been published in countries such as Argentina, Chile, Portugal, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Russia, France and Belgium, among others, and her work has been collected in dozens of national and international anthologies.
The Prize Jury
The jury was chaired by María José Gálvez Salvador, Director General of Books, Comics and Reading of the Ministry of Culture; and Almudena Hernández de la Torre Chicote, Deputy Assistant Director of the Subdirectorate General for the Promotion of Books, Reading and Spanish Literature, served as Vice-President.
The group of singers was composed of Carme Riera, proposed by the Royal Spanish Academy; Luciano Rodríguez Gómez, for the Royal Academy of Galicia/Real Academia Galega; Patxi Juaristi, for the Royal Academy of the Basque Language/Euskaltzaindia; Alexandre Bataller, for the Institute of Catalan Studies/Institut d’Estudis Catalans; Vicenta Tasa, for the Valencian Academy of Languages/Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua; Yolanda Morató, for the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE); Jordi Doce, for the Collegiate Association of Writers of Spain (ACE); Noni Benegas, for the Spanish Association of Literary Critics; Carmen Sigüenza, for the Federation of Journalists Associations of Spain (FAPE); Carmen Mejía, for the Institute of Feminist Research of the Complutense University of Madrid; Laura Casielles, for the Ministry of Culture and Yolanda Castaño, author awarded in the previous call.
