The eight parts of the night is Carmen’s third collection of poems, and it focuses on the darkness as a starting point. Carmen has always been fascinated by that strange dichotomy between light and dark, day and night, brightness and shadow. In the past, when there were no clocks or sun, for those who work and live at night it was necessary to divide the night into parts. Roman soldiers divided the night into four watches. The humanist Alfonso Fernández de Palencia, author of the Universal Vocabulary in Latin and in Romance (1490), divided the night into eight parts: vespero, crepusculo, concubio, intempesta, conticinio, galicinio, diluculo and anteliucano.

“This division symbolizes a poetics of the absence of light at night and the emotional response to each of those moments gives me incomparable inspiration when it comes to writing. And I need to write a story, a story of loss. The loss of love, a break, an ending. Charles Bukowski used to say that there is music in everything, even in defeat. That’s my aim: to write about loss, going through the darkness and when the light appears, a symphony is heard. Symbolically this book will be fall, but also rebirth; farewell, but also welcome.” – Carmen Berasategui Verástegui’’

Biography
Poet, editor, cultural manager and visual artist. After living in Madrid, France and England for a few years, Carmen settled in Barcelona where she worked for various publishers. Carmen created NUDO, a poetry festival in 2017 and she run it ever since. She is a partner and editor at the literary publishing house Trampa ediciones. On the other hand, Carmen belong to Barcelona Collage Collective and is part of the Association of Writers of Catalonia (ACEC) and the Women in the Visual Arts association (MAV). Carmen has participated for years in exhibitions, meetings and festivals at a national and international level. Author of the poetry books Cosas asombrosas ocurrirán hoy (Olifante, 2022) and Donde planean los pájaros (Piezas azules, 2018).

Read more about Carmen and about her residency at Vitlycke CPA here

www.carmenberasategui.com