Today March 21, we are celebrating World Poetry Day. From Libros de las Malas Compañías, we want to remember Rosalía de Castro, who appears in our book Marvelous, an invitation to trace the female genealogy of a neighborhood.
World Poetry Day commemorates one of humanity’s expressions and identities. Poetry, practiced throughout history and the world, speaks of our common humanity and our shared values. It can transform the simplest thing into a powerful catalyzer of dialogue and peace.
Rosalía de Castro was born in Santiago of Compostela in 1837 and died in Padrón in 1885. She was a Spanish author and wrote both in Castilian and Galician. She belonged to a noble family on her mother’s side. Her adolescence was dominated by a crisis due to the discovery of her condition as an illegitimate child of a priest. She also had weak health, which never improved.
Her first book, The Flower, was published in Madrid in 1857. It received great critiques from Manuel Martínez Murguía, who she married the following year. However, she lived through constant economic difficulties while being dedicated to her home and children.
Her poetry demonstrates anxiety, an overwhelming disquiet against strange premonitions, and thoughts in her surroundings. She also projected a collection of beautiful visions of the Galician environment, predominating a grey atmosphere of indefinite sadness. This sensitiveness conveyed a conception of nature as an animated and mysterious reality whose most visible signs depict a pained life.
From Libros de las Malas Compañías we want to remember this woman on this specific day as one of the protagonists of our book, Marvelous, who showed her passion and emotions through her poetry. This day is the best occasion to honor poets so that we can revive the oral tradition and promote reading, writing, and teaching of poetry. This way, our feelings will be able to find their way of being expressed.
Ana Galindo
