The musician, translator and poet Marti Salesknown as frontman of the band punk garage Els Surfing Sirlesis the new winner of the Jocs Florals Poetry Prize in Barcelona, one of the most important in the Catalan language.
Martí Sales has not only revealed himself to us as one of the most adrenaline-filled vocalists on the Catalan – and even state – scene, but he has spent years consolidating a solid career as a poet, writer and translator. Now he takes another step forward by becoming the winner of the Jocs Florals Poetry Prize in Barcelona with his book “Description of the mon”.
The award will be presented to him on May 18 at the Saló de Cent of the Barcelona City Council, within the framework of the Barcelona Poetry festival. The prize was awarded to him by a jury made up of Jordi Vintró Rigall, Gemma Casamajó Solé, Matilde Martínez Sallés, Àngels Moreno Gutiérrez and Manuel Forcano Aparicio, who made a unanimous decision, highlighting Sales’ work ahead of the more than fifty originals received in this edition.
Sales has written countless works in very different registers and has translated writers as important as Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Martin McDonagh or Vivian Gornickand even works by artists such as Kae Tempest or Patti Smith to Catalan. Aside from this, he has been the vocalist of the punk rock and garage band Els Surfing Sirlessome references on the Catalan scene thanks to albums like “LP” (10), “Eix Transversal” (10), “Romaní, semen i sang” (11) and “Consumer music” (13), all of them published before the sudden death of their guitarist Uri Caballero.
