Javier Velaza, Dean of the Faculty of Philology and Communication at the University of Barcelona, wins the 37th Loewe Poetry Prize

Javier Velaza, professor of Latin Philology and Dean of the Faculty of Philology and Communication at the University of Barcelona, has been awarded the prestigious Loewe International Poetry Prize, in its 37th edition. Velaza has won this award, considered one of the most notorious in Spanish-language literature, for his work Las ignorancias. The book, which explores in a deep and subtle way the limits of knowledge and the human condition, has been praised by the jury as one of the most relevant works of contemporary poetry.

Javier Velaza, professor of Latin Philology and Dean of the Faculty of Philology and Communication at the University of Barcelona, has been awarded the prestigious Loewe International Poetry Prize, in its 37th edition. Velaza has won this award, considered one of the most notorious in Spanish-language literature, for his work Las ignorancias. The book, which explores in a deep and subtle way the limits of knowledge and the human condition, has been praised by the jury as one of the most relevant works of contemporary poetry.
The winner will receive 30,000 euros for a prize for which 2,260 manuscripts from 39 countries were submitted. The award ceremony and the presentation of the book, which will be published in the Visor de Poesía Collection, will take place in March 2025.
As the poet himself has explained, Las ignorancias explores the ignorant condition of the human being, and is based on the three axioms of the philosopher Gorgias: nothing exists, if something existed it would be unknowable, and if something existed and was knowable it would be incommunicable. Velaza’s collection of poems is built on these three axioms: in the first part he investigates this unknowable essence of the human being; in the second, he does so from the point of view of philosophy, while in the third he debates the communicability of facts.
Javier Velaza (1963) is professor of Latin Philology and dean of the Faculty of Philology and Communication since 2017. He combines his academic career with poetic creation, and has become a central figure in the world of literature and a point of reference both inside and outside the university environment. As a poet, he has published Mar de amores y latinas (Ángel Urrutia Prize, 1996), De un dios bisoño (José Hierro National Poetry Prize, 1998), Los arrancados (2002), Enveses (Valencia Prize, 2018) and El campamento de los aqueos (City of Melilla International Poetry Prize, 2022).
His main lines of research are Latin epigraphy, the pre-Roman languages of the Iberian Peninsula, Roman literature and textual criticism. He is the author of the books Léxico de inscripciones ibéricas (1991); Epigrafía y lenguas ibéricas (1996); Litterae in titulis, titule in litteris. Elementos para el estudio de la interacción entre epigrafía y literatura en el mundo romano (with Marc Mayer and Mònica Miró, 1998); Itur in anticuam silvam. Cuestiones en torno a la tradición antigua del texto de Virgilio (2001); M. Valeri Probi Beryti fragmenta (2005), and La historia del texto de Terencio en la Antigüedad (2007), among others, and more than 200 articles. He is the editor of the first Antología de la literatura latina en catalán, published in 2017 by UB Editions.
He is a principal investigator of the consolidated research group Laboratorio para la Investigación y el Tratamiento de Textos Epigráficos Romanos y Antiguos (LITTERA) (Laboratory for the Investigation and Treatment of Roman and Ancient Epigraphic Texts), and stands out in the field of epigraphy, in which he has recently contributed to the study of the hand of Irulegi, one of the most important epigraphic discoveries of recent decades, and also of the now Larumbe, with two works from the year 2022.