Micro-workshop on “Poetry and Remains (Traces and Debris)”, by Yolanda Ortiz

On Thursday, February 27, 2025, starting at 6:30 p.m., the free micro-workshop titled “Poetry and Remains (Traces and Debris): ‘Gathering’ Remnants to Build a Lie That Explains Us”, led by Yolanda Ortiz, will take place in the Mariana de Pineda Room at the Madraza Palace. The workshop is limited to 15 participants. Those interested individuals can register at: talleres@granadaciudaddeliteratura.com.

This micro-workshop is part of the ongoing collaborations between Granada UNESCO City of Literature and the Vice-Rectorate of University Extension of the UGR, through the Literature Area of La Madraza-Center for Contemporary Culture of the UGR-Federico García Lorca Chair, established in 2018.

The workshop

This workshop aims to explore the need, the drive, and the attraction toward remnants. These remnants can be understood as debris, things set aside or forgotten, seemingly devoid of value. But they can also be seen as vestiges—traces that allow us to reconstruct, build, or invent a path to our roots or identity. This exploration is designed to be filled with questions:

• From what perspective do we articulate these remnants?
• Why are they absent from the voices of those who still live them?
• How can their tenderness and violence coexist?
• Do I wish to escape idealization?
• Do I want to connect with others through my remnants?

The workshop also seeks to explore ways of transforming these remnants into poetic material: how inherited and therefore imagined memory can take center stage in a poem, and how a nearly forgotten scent or an intuition of a reflection in water can become words aflame…

Yolanda Ortiz

Yolanda Ortiz (Jaén, 1981) is a teacher and researcher in the Department of Literature at the University of Granada. In 2009, she won the XVIII Prize for Emerging Writers from the Provincial Council of Jaén with her poetry collection El cordón umbilical. In 2018, she received the XXXI Joaquín Lobato Prize for Tierra de malvas, later published by Piedra Papel Libros. In 2020, she was awarded the Gerardo Diego Poetry Prize for her work Allozar, published by El Desvelo Ediciones. Her body of work also includes other poetry collections such as El miedo detrás (Poética y Peatonal, 2015) and Manotazos al aire (Baile del Sol, 2016). Ortiz has conducted poetry workshops in various settings and has organized the poetry recital series La Caja de Lot alongside poet Sergio R. Franco since 2012.