Individual residencies / Andorra
MONTSE HOMS
From Thursday, 6 March 2025 to Wednesday, 26 March 2025
Bio
With a degree in teaching from the University of Vic and in speech therapy from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Montse Homs has worked in education for more than 30 years. She studied writing at the Ateneu Barcelona School of Writing.
In 2008 she published Els Murris (Editorial L'Àlber), teaching material that includes a dozen illustrated stories. She has been writing full-time since 2013. Between 2013 and 2018 she published several stories in the magazine Cavall Fort. In 2020 Homs won the 29th Guillem Cifre de Colonya Award with the novel Arracades d'avellaner (Earrings on the Hazelnut Tree) (Barcanova) and published Faules poètiques (Poetic Fables) (Kalandraka) in March 2022.
She engages in recitals and gives workshops and talks in schools, libraries and bookshops.
Project
Joc que viu i fa caliu (A Game That Lives and Makes You Feel Warm) – book of children's poetry
Joc que viu i fa caliu is a poetry collection for children made up of a core poem that talks about poetry and around 30 others on traditional games. The title alludes to the poetry collection Del joc i del foc (On Play and Fire) (1946) by Carles Riba. The work is structured into six chapters in which the verses Del joc i del foc appear as the collection progresses, since the first verse of each stanza becomes the title of a chapter. Within the chapters we find the poems on the games, which have their own entity and at the same time refer back to one or more verses of the main poem. They begin with the poem "Baldufa", which conveys the impetus to the 30-odd poems that follow, taking on new forms and content across each chapter. The latter are inspired by games as they are known, but reflect the present moment, stepping back from morality and didacticism.
Landscape and Poetry
The three weeks at Faber Andorra sped by. I was able to throw myself into the two poetry projects I am working on, recite poems to the students of the Mare Janer school in Santa Coloma, present the book Arracades d'avellaner (Earrings on the Hazelnut Tree) at the La Trenca book shop in Andorra la Vella, and do interviews for the Ràdio i Televisió d’Andorra network... The icing on the cake was that I finished my stay with a guided tour of Espai Columba, where I was able to admire the paintings of Santa Coloma church in situ.
The poems I recited to the third-grade students came from the book Faules poètiques (Poetic Faules) (ed. Kalandraka), where I was joined by Laia Domènech, who delighted the children with her symbolism-filled illustrations. The poems give a voice to animals and each has something to say, from the firefly to the rhinoceros. And, as in fables, the animals reminded the children that when we talk about them, we are talking about humans. By contrast, my talk with the sixth-graders focused more on the poetry collection I was keen to finish during the Faber residence, Joc que viu i fa caliu (A Game That Lives and Makes You Feel Warm). These are poems that leverage traditional games as metaphors to talk about feelings.
Reciting the reworked poems in front of the children helped me check whether they were landing with them and at the same time find out whether they were motivating them to write new ones. The children were especially interested in the calligrams and I am already looking forward to them sending me their creations. Poetry is to be lived and we achieved it. Presenting Arracades d'avellaner was a true pleasure, both because it was organised by the Andorran writer Mariona Bessa and because I was very keen to present it in Andorra since, although it is an allegory of imaginative play, it is also a mountain book.
They were twenty days of intense creative work. It also rained and snowed like it hadn't in March for a long time, and that was also inspiring. The only thing left to say is that if everything was perfect it was also thanks to the Government of Andorra, which facilitates this residency, and to the welcome and dedication of the Faber coordinator of the Ministry of Culture, Sandra Colell.
