Cuban poet Reiniel Pérez is the youngest author to win the Loewe Poetry Prize

October 5, 2022

Cuban poet Reiniel Pérez, 23 years old, has won the Loewe Poetry Prize 2022 for his book Las sílabas y el cuerpo in the XXXV edition of these awards. The Jury, chaired by Víctor García de la Concha and composed of Gioconda Belli, Antonio Colinas, Aurora Egido, Margo Glantz, Juan Antonio González Iglesias, Carme Riera, Jaime Siles, Luis Antonio de Villena and Orlando Mondragón, has highlighted that it is «a unitary and rhythmic book, with great expressive fluency and a will to innovate».

The book will be published in the Visor Poetry collection, as every year since the prize's creation. «Sometimes Loewe has confirmed a poet's trajectory; this time it is a discovery,» announced Siles at the ceremony held on Tuesday at Casa Loewe, which cancels the Young Creation Prize once again, since its predecessor had also been the youngest to win it.

In this regard, jury members have added that it is «a book of carnal, almost obsessive love, that delves into the sexual life of words and revels in the presence of love in the body, as an emotional and eternal theme». «Las sílabas y el cuerpo is a surprising book for the unity of its ten long movements, maintained in tone, a type of verse and an admirable language temperature,» continues the verdict of awards that are celebrating their 35th edition.

«It is a great love book brilliantly written and expressed with a system close to the versicle of Saint-John Perse, rather than that of Vicente Aleixandre, and in which one can see a bold will to innovate very well conceived and resolved,» noted Jaime Siles.

Reiniel Pérez, the winning poet, is a student of Foreign Languages at the Central University of Las Villas in Cuba. Some of his poems have appeared in the anthology of the literary group La estrella en germen. Additionally, he was the winner of the Extraordinary Centenary Prize of Carilda Oliver this same year for his work Elegía del inocente y del maldito.

This call, endowed with 25,000 euros, received 1,976 participants from 38 countries. 48.3 percent came from Spanish America, with Mexico, Argentina and Colombia, in that order, being the countries with the highest participation rate. In Spain, the provinces with the highest number of submitted works are Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville.