Duran, Jèssica Pujol / Parker, Richard (tr.): To One / To Multiple

Pamenar Press, paperback

Publication Date: March 10, 2024

Publisher Marketing: 

A Multilingual Journey with Jèssica Pujol Duran

To One / To Multiple is a collection of multiple series of poetry that Jèssica Pujol Duran wrote while living in and out of London between 2013 and 2020. It contains a multiplicity of references, geographies, and voids, drawn from memory, objects and the present—where words become entangled with the language of marketing in order to reconfigure themselves in a poetic space that travels faster than the tube where these are found.

Jèssica writes in Catalan, Spanish and English, creating a multiplicity reunited in one form that invites the reader toward their own travel. The collection's multilingual nature enriches its exploration of everyday life and broader cultural narratives, offering a multifaceted reading experience. It includes both previously published works and new translations, highlighting Pujol Duran's skill in crafting poetry that crosses linguistic boundaries.

Dalliance, labour, reproduction, humour; childhood, danger, memory, shopping; bodies that ooze and separate; milk froth served to a face gone blue with language, and the face before it; bullshit jobs and butt banners; this universe cluttered and shaking and beautifully worn – there’s enough in Jèssica Pujol Duran’s new collection to make your spinning head stop and ‘tremble / in the relation’. Watch how her words bend and reconnect ‘until they become recognisable / and stars will unfold a new night’. Watch her wring the necks of the black roosters of Congress.
— Andrea Brady

These are configured stress patterns, lifted into song by shaped edges in troubled calms attentive and fraught, broken and recovered, suites of successive healing balms, courtships with jeopardy and worry lifted into lilts of soft warmth against torn moments. These poems enhance our breath and mould it; it is as if they record a daily routine damaged by circumstance and then repaired by this not described but glimpsed and caught, fields of images and imagination in an exemplary poetry to take your gasp into the street. The songs rise and fall but never dip and leave the reader in a state of rested lift.
— Allen Fisher