Viggo Mortensen praises Kevin Power’s posthumous collection of poems at the University of Seville

The actor and director Viggo Mortensen has presented the collection of poems ‘One more night at sea’ in the courtyard of the Center for Cultural Initiatives of the University of Seville (Cicus). Another Night on the High Sea’, the work of art critic, editor, poet and professor of American literature Kevin Power. The presentation, also led by Power’s widow, Mónica Carballas, is configured as an institutional tribute “that highlights the author’s intellectual career and his close relationship with the city of Seville.”

The event, chaired by the rector of the University of Seville (US), Carmen Vargas, included personalities from the cultural and artistic field, such as the Sevillian artist Curro González and the translators of the poetry collection Ignacio Fernández Rocafort and Andrés Catalán, the university institution reports in a press release.

The event stands out for the participation of the actor, filmmaker and editor Viggo Mortensen, whose presence provides “international projection” to an academic initiative focused on literature and contemporary thought. Owner of the Perceval Press publishing house that has published the collection of poems, Mortensen has highlighted “the prodigious mind” of Kevin Power, whom he has defined as “a benevolent sniper, always brilliant”, who did not share his knowledge in a paternalistic or competitive manner, but with great generosity.

His widow, Mónica Carballar, has explained that the collection of poems, in English and Spanish, is a compendium of 15 books and handmade collaborations, very short, and that includes an unpublished part that the author wrote between 2011 and 2012 and in which he reflected the presentiment of his own death.

During the event, Mortensen referred to the “cultural oasis” that the Cicus represents, “a jewel” full of art that he was looking forward to enjoying. Among the treasures that this center of the University of Seville preserves, a sample of Kevin Power’s bibliographic collection – of more than 4,200 volumes -, donated last year to the US, and which constitutes a valuable testimony of his intellectual career, marked by the dialogue between disciplines such as literature, art, music or history from a postmodern perspective.

In this exhibition you can see some poetry publications in English from the 60s and 70s, which influenced Power’s poetic production and which are at the same time a valuable testimony of the underground poetic publishing of that time.

The rector of the University of Seville thanked the family, present at the event, for the legacy of extraordinary relevance that Power has left in the hands of the University of Seville and which is now “opened to the university community.”

This collection has recently been cataloged by the Rector Antonio Machado Library of the University of Seville and can be consulted in the Cultural Research Laboratory (LIC) of Cicus. This space, inaugurated in December 2024, was born with the vocation of hosting projects focused on the analysis of the contemporary world, offering support to researchers and creators through facilities that combine a library, consultation room, workshops and multimedia resources.