Jorge Fernández Gonzalo's 'Topografía Marina' has won the XVI Ibero-American Hermanos Machado Poetry Prize, standing out among 574 submissions in this edition. The award, organized by the Seville City Council, includes a cash prize of 4,000 euros and the publication of the poetry collection in the prestigious Vandalia series by the José Manuel Lara Foundation.
The jury, chaired by Angie Moreno, delegate for Tourism and Culture, and comprising poets and specialists Javier Salvago, Abelardo Linares, Jacobo Cortines, and Ignacio F. Garmendia, praised the meditative tone of the winning book. The work sensitively reflects on childhood, time, love, pain, and nature, noted for its rich poetic imagery.
“"This award reaffirms the firm commitment of the Seville City Council to literary creation and, especially, to poetry as one of the deepest and most necessary cultural expressions."
Moreno emphasized that the high participation in the competition demonstrates its relevance and positions Seville as an Ibero-American cultural benchmark. She also highlighted the importance of promoting the legacy of the Machado brothers to project Seville's literary identity and tradition into the future.
Meanwhile, Pablo Morillo Pérez, general director of the José Manuel Lara Foundation, expressed his satisfaction with the continued collaboration with the City Council in literary promotion. Morillo Pérez noted that the Vandalia collection continues to expand with the incorporation of new voices, solidifying poetry as a unique and essential genre that encourages a more attentive and profound view of reality.
Born in Madrid in 1982, Jorge Fernández Gonzalo is the author of over twenty poetry collections and has received numerous accolades throughout his career. His early awards include the Joaquín Benito de Lucas for 'Mudo asombro' (2004) and the Hiperión Young Poetry Prize for 'Una hoja de almendro' (2004). He has also been honored with the Vicente Núñez, Amantes de Teruel, Santa Cruz de la Palma, César Simón, Albacara, and Juan Gil-Albert Ciutat de València prizes, among others. As an essayist, he has published more than a dozen books on philosophy, sociology, and literary theory, and has translated works by authors such as Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. He currently works as a philosophy professor at the Complutense University of Madrid.
The sixteenth edition of the award set a new participation record, with 574 poets registered, nearly 80 more than in the previous call. This figure solidifies the competition as a prominent reference in promoting poetic creation in the Ibero-American sphere.
