Clara Janés was born in Barcelona in 1940 and has published some forty volumes of poetry, several collections of essays and three novels. Among awards she has received are the Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts (2004), the Teresa de Ávila National Literary Prize (2007) and the Francisco Pino Prize for Experimental Poetry (2011). In 2014 she was enrolled as a Member of Honour by the International Centre for Transdisciplinary Research (CIRET) in Paris, and since 2015 she has been a member of the Spanish Royal Academy. She is also well known as translator of poetry, especially from Czech but also from French, English, Portuguese, Italian and, with other specialists, from Turkish and Iranian (both contemporary and ancient mystical poets). She has been awarded the Turkish Tutav Foundation Prize (1992), Spain’s National Translation Prize (1997), the First Category Medal of Merit from the Czech Republic (2000) and also the Sapere Aude prize (2017).