August Bover, "El contagi" (2021): Pandemic, isolation and the therapeutic power of poetry

In November 2021 August Bover (Barcelona 1949) published the collection of poems El Contagi [The Contagion]. In it, the author expresses his experience of the pandemic and isolation through the filter of poetry. In this way, the act of poetic composition and the resulting verses make it possible to express and convey thoughts, sensations and feelings, both positive and negative, but also acquire a therapeutic function. Al this turns into a therapy of the self, which becomes a collective therapy through sharing a common experience, even and especially in a dramatic moment like the one from which these verses are inspired. Thus, poetry becomes a space of freedom, a self-managed perimeter, in which to allow joys and fears, hopes and frustrations to emerge and flow, to shape and communicate to oneself and to readers an unprecedented, unimaginable experience, to objectify and observe it from the outside, and to transform it into a starting point for reflection on known and unknown aspects from a subjective and collective perspective. This double vision, individual and shared, derives from a common experience, from thoughts and states of mind that have affected each individual as well as the entire global community, which was (and still is) sharing an epochal and difficult phase in the history of the planet and of mankind. August Bover gives form to all this through the poetic word, which becomes the instrument for (self-)therapy, a reflection so profound that it seems to be a process of self-analysis. This is the way to start dealing with the unknown and the unimaginable: how to live through and survive an epoch-making event such as the one the planet is experiencing from the early 2020s, and to do so through writing. Literature, in this case poetry, reveals this component, that at first glance might be surprising, but that constitutes its essence: its cathartic and curative, therapeutic and almost thaumaturgical power, which emanates from the balm of the writer's (narrator, poet, playwright) words. These pages summarise the results of the El contagi [The Contagion] study from this perspective: how literature, more specifically poetry, proves to be a therapeutic tool for the author and the reader. This happens thanks to a mechanism of objectivisation, problematisation and literarisation of the trauma, of what strikes and upsets in the depths and nevertheless, and precisely for this reason, needs to be addressed. This collection of poems also fulfils this function, as do other works of other genres (fiction, drama, graphic novels, etc.), that have been written since the first phase of the pandemic and have sometimes been published online and then in print or have appeared directly in print. The results confirm the assumptions of this type of research and recognise the added value of these texts, in addition to their artistic-literary and aesthetic relevance, the poignancy of the themes dealt with, and the peculiar strength of this artistic individuality, the expression of a voice that is always powerful and always different.