Alicante Book Fair welcomes its most seasoned guest speaker this year, with the esteemed writer Carmina Seva signing copies of her latest release, melancholic blue, at the publisher’s booth ECU 17 muses on Friday, May 12.
For readers unfamiliar with this author, who will turn 89 on November 30, it’s worth noting her lifelong dedication to literature. A former member of Alicante Housewives and Consumers Association “Lucentum” and a longtime music theory teacher and pianist, Seva’s life reveals a deep, declared love for literature, especially poetry. Over the last twenty years she has explored poetry with remarkable energy. Her work has earned recognition, including First Prize in the Númen Comunidad Valenciana Poetry Competition in 2016 and again in 2018. Her published collections include slices of a life, published in 2011; intensity in 2017; and melancholic blue, released in 2022, the most recent volume to date.
At Alicante, author Mariano Sánchez Soler describes Carmina Seva as conveying genuine and emotional honesty in her writing. It is a gift for readers who love life and seek to carry its weight alongside the poet. Joaquin Penalva, a poet and professor, echoes this sentiment, noting that her work draws on deep lyrical traditions. Seva’s poetry speaks to readers as if it were a songbook, weaving themes of love, the song of life, hope, pain, and the many nuances of the world she inhabits.
Nostalgic and sparkling poetry of Carmina Seva
Writing poetry can be a healthy discipline and, at times, a necessity. The challenge lies in doing it well enough to invite readers to join as allies and accomplices. This is evident in Seva’s verse, where a musician’s ear, a sense of rhythm, a clear mind, and an expansive talent converge. Born into a life marked by the quiet struggles of women, Seva’s work resonates with those who know the daily realities that often keep women in secondary roles. Through her poetry, she gives voice to those moments and memories that shape a life.
Carmina has learned to select those fragments of life that linger in memory, moments that leave an enduring mark. She shows how writing preserves time, capturing love and heartbreak, disappointment and hope, loneliness and melancholy, abundance and compassion in a way that feels intimate and universal at once.
Those who have had the chance to know her, laugh with her, smile, cry, walk, talk, and even argue with her, will tell you what a large presence she is—someone with remarkable energy, empathy, warmth, and a deep tenderness for others. Getting to the core of her soul may be challenging, but in her case the secret room is opened by walking through her poetry. Poetry is her realm, and night tends to be the best time for her to create. The music of her poems carries a harmony that can move the reader, stirring everything from joy to pain, desire to anger, and even love.
It is often said that comparisons can be unfair, yet in the pages of melancholic blue, Seva honors voices of many women who have shaped her thinking. In particular, there is a thread that resembles Teresa of Jesus, a Teresa who rejects mere habit and seeks a human, moonlit love that defends a woman’s right to steer a ship rather than merely adorn a table, embodying dreams, life, and courage for the right soul.