Cantares del Mas ACA

'Cantares del más acá', by Jorge Solís, is a poetic work that reinterprets the Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross from a contemporary perspective, anchored in the immanence of the sensitive world. Previous winner of the Pablo García Baena Poetry Prize, Solís displays in this book a lyrical voice that fuses the mystical tradition of the Golden Age with the concerns of today's spiritual poetry. Through eleven 'Songs', the collection of poems traces an itinerary of loving encounter where the beloved -human, natural or projection of the self- is revealed as an omnipresent presence, transforming the transcendent longing of St. John into a celebration of the 'hereafter': 'Where did I find you / silent / without light in so much brightness': flowers, leaves, wind and light become epiphanies of the sacred. Nature, silence and love as intuitive knowledge run through the compositions, marked by a sensorial language and an almost liturgical rhythm that evokes the mystical cadence, although with an accessible simplicity. Poems such as 'Song of Encounter' or 'Song of New Light' explore the paradox of 'nothing knowing but love', while the closing, 'Song of Return', affirms the fullness of the present: 'and in this open forest / to be and to be being'. In dialogue with contemporary poets such as Ángela Segovia and María de la Cruz, Solís offers an intimate and corporeal spirituality, far removed from dogmas, that resonates with today's sensibility. Quotations from Juan Ramón Jiménez, Goethe and Emily Dickinson enrich his intertextuality, placing him on a bridge between the classical and the modern. Cantares del más acá' is a hymn to the visible as sufficient for beauty and truth, a work that reaffirms the validity of mysticism in a secular world, with a fresh and profound voice that invites us to inhabit the instant.

Jorge Solís (Cáceres, 1991) es graduado en Periodismo por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, donde posteriormente estudió un máster en Estudios Literarios. Realizó su tesis de fin de máster sobre la evolución del haiku en lengua española desde sus orígenes a la actualidad. Ha publicado tres poemarios: Cuartetos (2017), Perros que cantan (2019) y Ensayos (2021), todos en la editorial El sastre de Apollinaire. Sus poemas han sido traducidos al inglés y al chino, así como han sido recogidos y reseñados en antologías y revistas como Piedra del Molino (2021), Nayagua (2022) o Casapaís (2022). Con el libro 'Aún más en la mirada' (Cántico, 2023) Jorge Solís gana el I Premio de Poesía Joven Pablo García Baena (2a época).