Jose Maria Alvarez

José María Álvarez (Cartagena, Region of Murcia, May 31, 1942) is a Spanish poet, essayist and novelist. Author of Wax Museum , he belongs to the generation of the Newest.

Biography

Graduated in Philosophy and Letters, specializing in Geography and History (Universities of Madrid and Murcia), he studied Philosophy at the Central University of Madrid and attended courses by Raymond Aron at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France. He has two sons -Miguel (1964) and Rafael (1966)- from his first marriage. With residence on the Levantine coast and in Paris, his life has been devoted to literature and travel.

Trajectory

His first literary performances took place in 1957, in the Aula de Cultura of the Fundación Mediterráneo: organization of film clubs, conferences, theater, etc. His first publications date from that time: Soul and poetry and psyche . In 1959 his poetry already appeared published in a national magazine: Cuadernos de arte y pensamiento , and in 1961 the first publication of his outside Spain, being the cover of Les lettres françaises from Paris.

In 1976 he was awarded the Juan March Scholarship for Literary Creation. In 1970 he was part of the anthology « Nine new Spanish poets », by José María Castellet, published by Barral Editores.

He has directed a dozen editions of Ardentísima, an international poetry meeting held in Murcia, Buenos Aires (Argentina), and Puerto Rico, Berlin, Budapest, Paris, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Cairo, and Alexandria. He has also collaborated with the Encuentro de Poetas de Córdoba in 2004, with a view to its candidacy for the Cultural City of Europe.

On March 21, 2012, he received a tribute at the Ramón Gaya Museum in Murcia, for all his work.

Included in several anthologies of Spanish poetry, those of the Pleiade in France and the Oxford in England stand out. In 2013, the book «Exiled in art. Conversations in Paris with José María Álvarez”, prepared by the Navarrese poet Alfredo Rodríguez Domínguez. Recently, an extensive anthology established by Jorge Gustavo Portella has been published in Caracas (Venezuela) with the title: «Los prodigios de cera», and an anthology translated into Arabic by Mohamed Abuelata, in Cairo.

Wax Museum

His complete poetic work has been shaped over the years into a single title, Museo de cera, with successive editions and extensions in 1976, 1979, 1983, 1989, 1992 and 2002 The 2002 edition by Renacimiento publishing house includes all previous titles -La edad de oro, Nocturnos, El escudo de Aquiles, Tósigo Ardento, Signifying Nothing, The Spoils of the World, The Bronze Serpent and Ahab's Tear-. His latest books of poetry have also been published in Renaissance: On the delicacy of taste and passion (2006) and Drinking in the moonlight over the ruins (2008).

Works

Poetry

• Book of new tools1964.
• 87 poems1974.
• Wax Museum. Hyperion, 1976.
• The Golden Age1980.
• Nocturnos1983.
• Strict cough1985.
• The Achilles Shield1987.
• Signifying nothing1989.
• The Loot of the World1994
• The bronze serpent1996.
• The tear of Ahab1999
• For a lady with a past, 2004.
• On the delicacy of taste and passion, 2006.
• Drinking the moonlight on the ruins, 2008.
• The Leopard Obscuros of the Moon, 2010.
• Like the moonlight in a Martini, 2013.

Prose

His prose work is collected in:

• «South of Macao» (Edit. PreTextos),
• «Desolate greatness» (Edit. Sedmay, reissued in Edit. Regional de Murcia),
• «Finisterre (Edit Planet),
• «The fox hunt» (Edit Tusquets),
• «The educated slave» (Edit Tuquets),
• «The manuscript of Palermo» (Edit Planet),
• «The Sand Crown (Lawrence of Arabia)» (Edit Planet),
• «Dead natures» (Edit. PreTextos),
• «About Shakespeare» (Edit. The Winter),
• «Sieg Heil!» (Edit. Renaissance),
• «The unbearable mildness of freedom" (Edit. Nausícaä).

And also, his two diaries: «Diary of the bronze serpent» and «Diary of Ahab's tear» (both published by Editora Regional de Murcia), and the memoir «Los decorados del olvido» (Ed. Renaissance, 2004).

Translations

• The complete work of Constantine Cavafis;
• The Treasure Island and Weir de Hermiston of Robert Louis Stevenson;
• The Waste Land of T.S. Eliot; an anthology of the nightingale in English poetry;
• The complete work of François Villon;
• Them Sonnets of William Shakespeare;
• The call of the wild of Jack London;
• La Ode for the Death of Wellington Duke of Alfred Tennyson;
• From the scrapbook of a nebula 66 John Liddy;
• In collaboration with Txaro Santoro The poems of madness by Friedrich Hölderlin and the poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson, and Anastasya Agarisseva The vertebral flute of Vladimir Maiakovski.

Collaborations

He has published History papers and small collaborations in magazines such as Europa, Playboy, Nobissimo, Historia 16, El País, Cambio 16, Cuadernos del Norte, De Azur (Columbia University, New York), Diario 16, Dissidents, Barcarola, Ideologies for a King, Hispanic-American Notebooks, BEL, Poetry from Spain, Hiperion, Revue Internationale de Poesie, Poeti Spagnoli per la Liberta, Caracola, L'Ozzio, Baquiana, Lengua, Phréatique, Arsenale, Twenty Sideways Glances, Salamander, The Expedition, Reef, The wolf's nap, B.O.I.N.A., Alora, Poetry on Campus, Under the bridges of the Drina, The century to come, The forest, Nagy Vilag, Cervantes, Ab Libitum, Sammkung Zerstreung, Southern Notebooks, Rena foundation, Alhayat. He has also written forewords to 19th century century English novelists for Planet classics.

For Radio Nacional de España he has written the serials:

• «The last of Maracaibo», a story of piracy;
• «Suave is the night», and «The War of the American States», a history of American civil war.

And he has collaborated as a film scriptwriter with Francisco Rabal.

Courses

He has given lectures and courses at Universities in the United States - South Carolina, New York and Long Island - France (Dijon and the Sorbonne), Germany (Humboldt, Berlin), Russia (Saint Petersburg and Moscow), Japan (Sofia, Kansai, Kyoto), Caracas (Catholic University), Buenos Aires (Hayek Chair) etc, highlighting his interventions at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England.

Awards

• He was President of the World Tribute to Ezra Pound in Venice in 1985.
• He was President of the International Meeting of Writers held in 1986 in Murcia.
• In 1989 he received the Premio Internacionál de Poesía "Barcarola" for his book «Signifying nothing».
• In 1990 he received the Doctorate Honoris Causa by Dowling, New York-Long Island, for the whole of his work, together with Mario Vargas Llosa and Camilo José Cela.
• In 1991 he was finalist of the "Vertical Smile" Award for his novel «The fox hunt».
• In 1992 he won the same "Vertical Smile" Award with his novel «The educated slave».
• In 1993 he was finalist of the Planet Prize for his work «The manuscript of Palermo».
• In 1998 he received the International Poetry Prize "Loewe" for his work «The tear of Ahab».
• In 2001 he was researched Academic by the World Poetry Academy in Verona, Italy.
• In 2004 he was appointed a member of the "Mallarmé" Academy of Poetry in Paris.
• In 2007 his book «On the delicacy of taste and passion» was chosen Best Murcian Book of the Year 2006.
• In 2007 he received the Lovely Poetry Award from the Association of Fine Arts of Mallorca.
• On January 25, 2014, he received a tribute in Cartagena, his hometown.