Luis García Montero is a Spanish poet, literary critic and academic. He is a professor of Spanish literature at the University of Granada and since 2018 General Director of the Instituto Cervantes.

As a poet, author and essayist he has received, among others, the National Literature Prize (1994), the National Critics Prize (2003), the Madrid Guild of Booksellers Prize (2009), the Poets of Latin America Prize (México, 2010), the Ramón López Velarde Prize (México, 2017) and the Parallel Zero Prize (Ecuador, 2018).

"Poetry" by Luis García Montero, translated by Katie King (source: "Poetry" by Luis García Montero - Words Without Borders)

Poetry is useless, it serves only
to behead a king
or seduce a young woman.

Perhaps it serves also,
if water is death,
to part the water with a dream.
And if time grants its unique matter,
it serves possibly as a blade,
because a clean cut is better
when we open memory’s skin.
With broken glass
desire
leaves ragged wounds.

You are poetry,
a clean cut,
a part in the water
–if water is the reason for existence–,

the woman who submits to seduction
in order to behead a king.