Affects and emotions in the cities of Àngels Gregori, Mireia Calafell and Maria Callís

Abstract

This article analyses three samples of current female urban poetry written in Catalan from the paradigm of the so-called spatial turn and affective turn. Urban space is not considered a simple stage, but becomes a symbolic world where emotions emerge and circulate across poetry. The research focuses on the poets Àngels Gregori, Mireia Calafell and Maria Callís. Through a walk along their poetry collections, differentiated and complementary visions of the city are discovered, which bring out emotions in both the poetic voice and the reader. Gregori claims a metropolis, New York, that is promise and freedom, but also melancholy. Calafell explores love and sisterhood in an urbs taken over by mass tourism. Callís shows us the most alienating and harsh side of Barcelona. The article configures an emotional map of the urban space from the perspective of women, who appropriate the city through poetry as a tool of resilience and liberty. It is a vindication of the figure of the Catalan flâneuses of the 21st century and of poetry as a motor of social change, in a city where the streets become verses that speak of the interaction between the poetic self and the urban world.