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This made me Joan Brossa
‘It was at that time, in 1943, that I made the first object poem. I was going down the street and saw a kind of tree bark in a rubbish bin. The shape caught my attention. I put it vertical and liked it even more. I lived near a carpenter and asked him to give it a base, because it seemed interesting, and he told me: ‘So now you’re picking up everything...’
Joan Brossa in interview with Lluís Permanyer: Brossa x Brossa: records. Barcelona: La Campana, 1999 [Memoirs of Joan Brossa dictated to Lluís Permanyer]
‘It began in 1951 with an exhibition of Dau al Set at the Galeria Caralt, which included texts of mine. I had three poems that, for want of another name, were called experimental poems because they were built using objects: a hammer, a playing card, an altered nail, etc. I felt the need to try things out, to find a new measure to the poem, just like when in the theatre I needed a third dimension to the plain text of the written poem, beyond the traditional conventions of drama. In my early literary essays I gave great importance to language, the bulk of the language, but I saw that this was just a trick and I had to find a new concept. One day, João Cabral de Melo told me he appreciated my poetry, full of images and brilliant, but that it was like an eye that sees but doesn’t look. Thus began what I call essentialist poetry, for lack of a better name.’
Joan Brossa in interview with Ramón Lladó: ‘Entrevista a Joan Brossa: el poeta en estat d'aventura’, El Temps, 11 June 1990.
‘I made the performance poems because I needed to find a third dimension to my poetry. This performance poetry has nothing to do with conventional theatre, drama. There were characters that came on stage, who said a few words combined with colourful curtains falling. Then I saw that these characters could start other things.’
Joan Brossa in interview with Salvador Pujol Argudo y Josep Ramón Recordà: ‘Preguntes a Joan Brossa’, Artilletres: revista cultural, no. 7, June 1989.
‘I started doing poetry in the classical sense of the literary code and, in fact, I decided to write plays because I was seeking another dimension to plain literature; I thought that the theatre offered me this other dimension. Maybe it was the movement. In poetry, I started working with language a lot; later I noticed the bulk of the wig and knew that if I could remove this wig I’d be able to show the head of the poem. (…) All this led me – especially in Em va fer Joan Brossa – to a very expressive poetry, anti-rhetorical, direct, without many adjectives, but with vibrancy – this vibrancy, if you don’t have it, you can’t learn it, you either have it or you don’t. It’s the duende [spirit]. And the duende, Lorca says, is not a thought, it is a power. And from here to visual poetry is another step. Everything has been a process.’
Joan Brossa in interview with Marta Nadal: ‘Joan Brossa: un poeta atípic’, Serra d’or, no. 373, January 1991.
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