David Castillo

David Castillo is a journalist, critic, novelist and poet. From his youth he has been a tireless cultural activist and hence has brought together a range of alternative groups organising and directing poetry festivals while also working as director of cultural supplements in the mainstream press. His poetic and novelistic works are characterised by a spareness of form, relentless sincerity, rock motifs and Barcelona settings.

David Castillo imbibes of the very essence of life and, wherever he is, he gleans the poetic spirit transforming it into a geographic imaginary: Barcelona's Barri Xino (once the old city's red-light district), the neighbourhood of Carmel, the Rambla, the seaside town of Castelldefels, and Montevideo, New York or Manila. Downtown (Icaria, 2005) is his latest book, written in Catalan and Spanish, and its poems were born in long walks around the city of skyscrapers, before and after 11 September.

Downtown is no tourist jaunt but a journey through human desolation that invites the reader to listen to life's heartbeat: in the Nuroyican Poets Cafè, Spanish Harlem, the Bronx and Times Square. In "Loisaida", Castillo moves between memory and the melancholy of time. The second part of the book includes a song to the young inmates of Barcelona's Trinitat prison, while the collection ends with the Spanish-language piece "Montevideo blues" and the reappearance of David "Dylan" Castillo, while "Dejemos hablar al viento" (Let the Wind Speak) is a performance by the absurd Camusian of El malentendido (The Misunderstanding).

David Castillo (Barcelona, 1961), is a poet and journalist. His first writing was published in 1975 when, at fourteen years of age, he was working as an office boy in the Banco Ibérico. In 1976 he joined the CNT (the anarchosyndicalist National Labour Confederation). This was the period of libertarian "barricades", permanent parties on the Rambla, the first demonstrations (after the Franco dictatorship), Ocaña's Carnival, the Café de l'Òpera, Christa Leem's stripteases, counter-propaganda stalls in the streets, counterculture performances, Libertarian Sessions and everyone dragging on collective hash. Alternative publications were making their presence felt: Ajoblanco, Viejo Topo, Alfalfa, Topo Avizor, and Star ... and then there were the fanzines Cloaca, Fuera de Banda, Trotón, Tricopo and the comic El Rollo enmascarado. All of this went hand-in-hand with the soundtracks of Bowie, Dylan and Lou Reed, among others. It was a time of continuous debates, never-ending discussion emanating from libertarian ideas, situationism and nexialism. Castillo's involvement in radical politics led to his arrest. That Republic "A" on the Rambla was so free that it was "militarily" occupied by the police. Jaume Sisa described it in one of his songs: "They have closed the Rambla / everyone's thrown out / they have emptied the trees / of the flowers and the birds."

The young poet's education is completed with his methodical reading of the world's great poets: Cernuda, García Lorca, Aleixandre, Vallejo, Larrea, Vinyoli, Bonet, Rimbaud, Ashbery, Blake, Milton, Yeats, Coleridge, Auden, Corso ... and he then mixes them together with the metaphysical ingredient of pure philosophy and the dynamic power of pop music. The poet's path is marked by his contact with real-world circumstances, in the neighbourhoods of his city and in suburbs elsewhere in the world to which he would be no stranger. Castillo, born in Poble Nou, has harvested the imaginary of the working-class districts of his city, among them Carmel, la Ribera, la Barceloneta, and the Barri Xino.

At the beginning of the 1980s he started to participate in poetry readings in libertarian venues, the bars of the Gràcia neighbourhood and other parts of the city. In this poetic journey, he was accompanied by Jesús Lizano, Pope, Enric Casasses, Joan Vinuesa, "Oaixí", etc.. Àngel Carmona, director of La Pipironda, also organised poetry and theatrical events that did the rounds of the alternative spaces of Barcelona. In 1985, David Castillo joined the board of the Junta de l'Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular (AEP - People's Athenaeum), which was then housed in the Casa de Caritat. His period in the AEP coincided with meetings held by old anarchist militants, who were always generous with young people who wanted to take the road to Ithaca. By this time, Castillo was embarking on his career as a journalist and he was writing for El País, La Vanguardia and, after 1988, Avui, while also being published in the reviews El Món, El Temps among others. In the 1990s he became director of the Culture Supplement of Avui, director of Lletra de Canvi, and wrote for the prestigious literary publications, Quimera, Insula, Leer, Qué leer?, etc.. He has coordinated the Barcelona Poetry Week since 1995 and has become an outstanding member of the Catalan literary world. Continue reading...