This July, the Maresme will once again become a map of verses, unexpected music and shared artistic experiences. From July 1 to 12, the Poesia i + Festival will celebrate its 21st edition, consolidated as one of the most unique cultural events in the country, a proposal that long ago surpassed the limits of the conventional poetry recital to become a space for experimentation, dialogue and encounter between disciplines.
This year the program will reach Teià, Arenys de Mar, Sant Pol de Mar, Vilassar de Mar, Dosrius, Mataró, Alella and Caldes d’Estrac, bringing together around fifty artists who share the same desire: to explore the transformative power of words and their capacity to connect us with the world through sensitivity, reflection and beauty.
The origins of the festival date back to the open-air poetry cycles promoted by Josep Palau i Fabre from 2003, coinciding with the inauguration of the Palau Foundation. Three years later, the initiative adopted the name Poesia i +, clearly expressing its vocation to go beyond poetry understood in a strict sense. As Palau i Fabre defended, poetry leads all the arts; an idea that continues to be the guiding thread of a festival that combines literature, music, visual arts, performance and stage proposals of various formats.
True to this legacy, the festival has grown year after year. Since 2016, the collaboration between the Palau Foundation and several municipalities in the region has expanded the territorial scope of the project, while reinforcing its identity. The result is a program that brings together the public with some of the most relevant poetic voices of the moment, alongside creators from other disciplines who dialogue with the word and project it towards new and unexpected territories.
One of the most distinctive features of Poesia i + is precisely its deep roots in the Maresme. Beyond the invited artists, the spaces become essential protagonists of the experience. The Palau Foundation, the Pou del Glaç in Dosrius and other unique settings transform each performance into a cultural discovery linked to the landscape and the memory of the places.
Attending the festival also means visiting towns and environments that, in the height of the summer season, are often associated exclusively with the coast and beach leisure. Poesia i + claims these spaces as settings for thought, creation and community, inviting the public to a kind of contemporary pilgrimage between sea and mountain, between heritage and contemporaneity.
In times marked by uncertainty and speed, the festival maintains its commitment to offering moments of pause, listening and artistic intensity. For twelve days, the Maresme will once again be a territory where the spoken word becomes a shared experience, where poetry dialogues with all the arts and where culture is experienced as a form of encounter.
