Looking to the Future

Our relationship with the future has changed. There are no more sweeping promises to guide our present to better horizons. For some time now, political and economic crises and the unsustainability of our way of life seem to have been leading to a dead-end where the word “future” is devoid of any meaning. But nowhere is it written that we are inevitably heading for collapse. Perhaps the experience of the last few months, in a world ravaged by the pandemic, is an occasion for looking ahead in a different way and putting into words a future collective that retreats from dystopias and makes of this unlooked-for present a fount of new opportunities. Will we be able to do this?

In this session, which is jointly organized with Poetry Week 2020, the poet Enric Casasses, with the musician Ilia Mayer, will present a poetic manifesto for the future and give names to some of the hopes and disappointments that come with this word. Next, the writer Margaret Atwood, paragon of speculative fiction and creator of some of the best-known dystopias of recent decades, will speak by videoconference with the journalist Anna Guitart. Moreover, we present her poetic work with Maria Callís Cabrera who will recite some of her poems which have been translated into Catalan by Montserrat Abelló.