Joan Margarit (1938-2021) was one of Spain's major modern writers. He worked as an architect and first published his work in Spanish, but over the past four decades became known for his mastery of the Catalan language, and was Spain's most widely acclaimed contemporary poet. The melancholy and candour of his poetry show his affinity with Thomas Hardy, whose work he translated. He was awarded both the 2019 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary honour, and the Reina Sofia Prize for Ibero-American Poetry 2019, the most important poetry award for Spain, Portugal and Latin America. In the much praised Tugs in the Fog: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2006), Joan Margarit evoked the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, the harshness of life in Barcelona under Franco, and grief at the death of a beloved handicapped daughter, reminding us that it is not death we have to understand but life. Five of his later collections were translated by Anna Crowe and published by Bloodaxe in two compilations, Strangely Happy (2011) and Love Is a Place (2016). Wild Creature brings together the poems of his final two collections, Un hivern fascinant (An amazing winter, 2017) and Animal de bosc (Wild creature, 2020). The two books that make up this final collection in English show us a poet writing at the end of his life, and facing up to his approaching death with courage, humility and even humour. Confronting loss is one of Margarit's enduring themes, and many of these poems do just that but - continuing the theme of his previous collection, Love Is a Place - there are even more that celebrate love and everyday domesticity, and he reminds us that love needs to be worked at. These are poems that arise naturally out of an examined life, and although he does not spare himself or the folly of our times, there is great tenderness in the way he reaches out to embrace life, love, and the pain of the past. A solitary, Margarit pays tribute to other writers and artists of that ilk, to the rural poverty of his childhood, and to the wild creature deep in each one of us whom we ignore at our peril.

Joan Margarit (1938-2021) was one of Spain's major modern writers. He worked as an architect and first published his work in Spanish, but over the past four decades became known for his mastery of the Catalan language, and was Spain's most widely acclaimed contemporary poet. The melancholy and candour of his poetry show his affinity with Thomas Hardy, whose work he translated. He was awarded both the 2019 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary honour, and the Reina Sofia Prize for Ibero-American Poetry 2019, the most important poetry award in for Spain, Portugal and Latin America. In the much praised Tugs in the Fog: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2006), Joan Margarit evoked the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, the harshness of life in Barcelona under Franco, and grief at the death of a beloved handicapped daughter, reminding us that it is not death we have to understand but life. In his later collection, Strangely Happy (2011), he builds an architecture of the human spirit out of the unpromising materials of self-doubt, despair and death. In Love Is a Place, which brings together the poems of three recent collections, he finds himself face to face with the prospect of his own death, while rediscovering love. 'Death is the final solitude,' he writes in 'On the ground', but the image at the end of the poem is one of hope, of love, and of home, not 'the skeleton with the scythe that Durer engraved' but 'a brightly-lit window in a dark street.' The three collections see him moving from despair to self-knowledge, confronting his old demons with honesty and courage. Love, it seems, is not after all 'hard or far away', nor was the signal lost, because, in the poet's words,, 'Love is a place. / It endures beyond everything: from there we come. / And it's the place where life remains.'

Joan Margarit (1938-2021) was one of Spain's major modern writers. He worked as an architect and first published his work in Spanish, but for the past four decades became known for his mastery of the Catalan language, and was Spain's most widely acclaimed contemporary poet. The melancholy and candour of his poetry show his affinity with Thomas Hardy, whose work he translated. In the much praised Tugs in the Fog: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2006), Joan Margarit evoked the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, the harshness of life in Barcelona under Franco, and grief at the death of a beloved handicapped daughter, reminding us that it is not death we have to understand but life. Now in the more recent work translated in Strangely Happy, he builds an architecture of the human spirit out of the unpromising materials of self-doubt, despair and death. In writing stripped of all inessentials, and in the company of his dead, Joan Margarit confronts old age and his own death in poems that go on moving us with their harsh, poignant music. His poetry confronts the worst that life can throw at us, yet what lingers in the mind is its warmth and humanity.

Manuel Forcano, the outstanding Catalan poet, is a great traveller, and the poems in this, his first full-length book in English translation, embrace the cities, the landscapes and the people of the Middle East. Drawn from his four most recent collections, these poems use geographical and historical references to deepen and inform the narrative, and also to lay before the reader the idea of the continuity, over many centuries, of human love and desire. The beauty, joy, grief and tenderness in these poems are universal and belong to every kind of human affection - indeed Forcano has been described by the Catalan journalist and academic Pere Ballart as 'our foremost love poet'. Anna Crowe's beautiful translations demonstrate a remarkable understanding of, and sensitivity to, Forcano's poetry, so much so that one might say that Maps of Desire represents the perfect union of poet and translator.

History shows how Catalan culture has overcome critical situations far more adverse than the present. The Catalan language has not been replaced and this anthology contains four Catalans, one Valencian and one Mallorcan, who, although they lived through the tail end of the dictatorship, grew up under a democratic regime. Together, their work could not be more modern, comprehensive or polyphonic: politics and history cohabit with love (both heterosexual and homoerotic), learned allusion and popular image, stanzaic rigour and freedom of form, the song to the land of one's birth and hymn to the voyage. Featuring the work of six of Catalonia's leading poets - Josep Lluis Aguilo, Elies Barbera, Manuel Forcano, Gemma Gorga, Jordi Julia, Carles Torner - translated by a prize-winning translator, and with an introductory essay which sets the poets within a wider literary context.

Anna Crowe writes to rescue obscure stories and give a voice to things that have no voice. Her poems celebrate the mystery and diversity of the natural world while mourning its fragility. Birds fly in and out of poems in which lurk extraordinary invertebrates and strange plants; the vulnerability of human lives and family relationships is another concern. One of the foremost translators of Catalan poetry into English, her appetite for language is rooted in her love of music. The Poetry Book Society selectors described her poems as "sinewy and questing, alive with memory and attentive to the interior landscape".

'Peatlands' is the first bilingual single collection of Mexican poet Pedro Serrano's work to be published in the UK.These poems are wide ranging and passionate. Linguistically thrilling, they explore the world of snakes, swallows, valleys and skyscrapers, weariness and love. Reading through the eclectic subjects, provokes a sense of searching, a sense of chaos from which ultimately grows a unification of all things, so the dung beetle, scribe and feet are all part of one entity. Just as he enjoys presenting both image and concept in his poems, he gives the reader the space in these slowly unraveling poems to immerse fully in his particularly intense worldview.

Joan Margarit (1938-2021) was one of Spain's major modern writers. He worked as an architect and first published his work in Spanish, but for the past four decades became known for his mastery of the Catalan language. The melancholy and candour of his poetry show his affinity with Thomas Hardy, whose work he translated. In poems evoking the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, the harshness of life in Barcelona under Franco, and grief at the death of a beloved handicapped daughter, Margarit reminds us that it is not death we have to understand but life. His poetry confronts the worst that life can throw at us, yet what lingers in the mind is its warmth and humanity. Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation.