Eliane Potiguara: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Eliane Potiguara Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Eliane Potiguara (1950) is an award-winner writer, poet, activist, professor, social entrepreneur of indigenous descent. She published the following books: A Terra é a Mãe do Índio (1989), Akajutibiró: Terra do Índio Potiguara (1994), Metade Cara, Metade Máscara (2004; 2018), O Sol do Pensamento (2005), O Coco que guardava a noite (2012), O Pássaro Encantado (2014), A Cura da Terra (2015). She was bestowed the Order of Cultural Merit from the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, and participated in the elaboration of The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Her texts and poems have been published in several magazines, websites, anthologies and e-books.

In this century of pain

In this century we'll no longer have sexes.
For being a mother in this century of death
Is to be feverish to subexist
Is to be a female in pain
Plundered in the condition of woman

I repeat
That in this century we'll no longer have sexes
I don't care if they understand
Or can only grasp it in another stupid century

We no longer have vaginas, we no longer breed
Our husbands have died
And to bear sick indigenous people
For our children to be killed
And thrown in the ditches
On the obscure roads of life
In this world without people
It only takes one mastermind

In this century we'll no longer have breasts
Spites, eyes, mouths or ears
Sexes or ears do not matter
Principles, morals, prejudices or defects
I no longer want the agony of the centuries ...

In this century there'll be no more way for us
Manners, beauty, love or money
In this century, oh God (? !)
There'll be no way for us.

Translated by Rubens Chinali
Published in Contemporary Brazilian Poetry (2020).

Ricardo Aleixo: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Ricardo Aleixo Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Ricardo Aleixo (born in 1960 in Belo Horizonte) is a decidedly interdisciplinary artist. He is a poet, essayist, editor, visual artist, sound designer, singer, composer and performer. He co-founded and curates the FAN (Festival de Arte Negra), the major art and culture festival of the African Diaspora in Brazil.He is the author of six books, including his latest Pesado demais para a ventania: antología poetica (Todavia, 2018). Best known for his poetry’s visual and social characteristics, his work draws connections between concrete poetry and ethno-poetry.

My Man

I am whatever you think a black man is. You almost never think about black men. I will always be what you want a black man to be. I am your black man. I’ll never be only your black man. I am my black man before I am yours. Your black man. A black man is always somebody’s black man. Or they are not a black man at all, but a man. Just a man. When they say that a man is black, what they mean is that he is more black than he is man. But all the same, I’m a black man to you. I’m what you imagine black men to be. I can spill onto your whiteness the blackness that defines a black man in the eyes of someone who is not black. The black man is the invention of the white man. It is believed that to the white man falls the burden of creating all that is good in the world, and that I am good, and that I was created by whites. That they fear me more than they fear other white people. That they fear me, but at the same time desire my forbidden body. That they would scalp me for the doomed love they bear for my blackness. I was not born black. I’m not black every moment of the day. I am black only when they want me to be black. Those times that I am not just black, I am as adrift as the most lost white person. I am not just what you think I am.


Translated by Dan Hanrahan

Shango

The one who
hurls stones
of lightning
against the house
of the meddler.
Leopard,
husband of Ọya.
Leopard,
son of Yemoja.
Shango boils
yams
with the wind
that leaves
his nostrils.
He gives a new name
to the Musulmi.
He is still alive
when they think
he is already dead.
Orisha who kills
the first
and who kills
the twenty-
fifth.
Shango chases down
the Christian
with his cry,
cloud
that overshadows
a corner of the sky.
Leopard
with coruscant gaze,
do not allow
death
to take me
one single day
before my time.

Translated by Rubens Chinali
Published in Contemporary Brazilian Poetry (2020).

Night of Calunga in the Bairro Cabula

I died how many times
in the longest night?

In the motionless night,
heavy and long,

I died how many times
on the night of calunga?

The night does not end
and here I am

dying again
nameless and again

dying with each
hole opened

in the musculature
of the person I once was.

I died how many times
in the bleeding bruised night?

In the night of calunga
so long and so heavy,

I died how many times
on that terrible night?

The night most death
and there I was

dying again
voiceless and again

dying with each
bullet lodged

in the deepest depths
of what I remain

(and with each silence
of stone and mortar

that sheds the white
of your indifference

onto the shadow
of what I no longer am

and never will be again).
I died how many times

in the night of calunga?
In the brackish night,

night without end,
the oceanic night, all

emptied of blood,
I died how many times

in the terrible night
the night of calunga

in the Bairro Cabula?
I’ve died so many times

but they never kill me
once and for all.

My blood is a seed
that the wind roots

in the belly of the earth
and I am born again

and again and my name
is that which does not die

before making the night
no longer the silent

partner of death
but the mother that births

children the color of night
and watches over them

as a panther
who shows, in the light

of her gaze and in
the sharpness of her teeth,

just what she will do
if the hand of evil

even imagines
troubling the sleep

of her cub.
I’ve died so many times

but I am always
reborn stronger

brave and beautiful—
all I know is to be.

I am many, I extend
across the world

and across time inside
me and I am so many

one day I will make
life live.

Translated by Dan Hanrahan

Nicolas Behr: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Nicolas Behr Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Nicolas Behr (Cuiabá - 1958) is a Brazilian poet, generally associated with the Mimeograph Generation and Marginal Poetry. In 1977, he launched Iogurte com farinha (Yogurt with flour) - his first made in mimeograph, with 8,000 copies sold from hand to hand through bars and other public places in the Federal Capital. In August 1978, after writing Grande Circular, Caroço com Goiaba and Chá Com Porrada he was arrested and prosecuted by DOPS for "possession of pornographic material", being tried and acquitted the following year.

Lar do Menor

(The House for the Young)

where today stands edith’s house,
where they sell fabric,
was the lar do menor

lar do menor was demolished
everything was demolished

everything
everything
everything
everything
everything
everything

they even demolished our
football field

Enigmatic Brasilia

brasilia, there are exactly 3232 days left
until we balance the books

you owe me a poem
i owe you a tender look

on the shores of the paranoa lake
i grab a piece of wood
between an old tire and a dead fish
(an egret is my witness)

you don’t recognize me
i don’t recognize you

* * *
how to decipher
your handwriting
of posts and winds?

The Story Of Quinzinho

quinzinho was a crazy guy
that traveled between
montes claros and janauba,
in the north of minas gerais

to enliven his walks
he constructed a truck
made of wood, carrying
different wares
all from his farms, he would say

cattle, rice, charcoal, pequi and,
more recently, soy
all nicely set up
in his toy truck

quinzinho was killed, run over,
close to capitão enéas
while he changed the tire
of his truck
on the side of the road
Translated by Michael J. Hill

Olga Savary: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Olga Savary Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Olga Savary (21 May 1933 – 15 May 2020) was a Brazilian writer, poet, and literary critic. She wrote several publications and was a member of PEN International. Notably, she won the Prêmio Jabuti in 1970 for Espelho Provisório. In Olga Savary, there is a mixture of explosion and sensitivity, of folly and modesty, as if she feared, by speaking out loud, she would break the enchantment of life: whether it be a child, a memory, a city. Olga Savary died on 15 May 2020 in Teresópolis at the age of 86 due to COVID-19.

Eden Hades

Water gardens satisfy our thirst
sunshine swollen in veins
hanging like mango
and I was like the owner of a ship
arrogant, deserving. Just like
an open vowel, I opened doors for the sand
in sudden loss of memory.
That the air should be swallowed like a ship.
All the sea breeze appears on the terraces
and vibrates in the sargassos above the swells.
Caught in the trap
Transforms the darkness to morning.
These are the contours of the dream:
a silver plaque and a name inscribed,
today deleted, engraved long,
long ago. And only that. The gods summon us,
they want us all because they want nothing,
they laugh at us, they lose us to win us
and to our questions
they play deaf,
they don’t respond except for the hollow
echo. Everything loses meaning
evil is pronounced.

Translated by Rosaliene Bacchus

Angélica Freitas: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Angélica Freitas Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Angélica Freitas (born April 8, 1973) is a Brazilian poet and translator. Angélica Freitas had her poems published for the first time in an anthology of Brazilian poetry published in Argentina, titled Cuatro poetas recientes del Brasil (Buenos Aires: Black & Vermelho, 2006), organized and translated by Argentine poet Cristian De Nápoli. Her first book of poems was Rilke Shake (São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2007). In 2012 her book um útero é do tamanho de um punho was a finalist on 2013 Prêmio Portugal Telecom.The English edition of Rilke Shake (translated by Hillary Kaplan) won the Best Translated Book Award for poetry in 2016. Freitas's poetry was published in France, Germany, Mexico, Spain and the United States. Her poems were published at several print and digital magazines

The Woman Is A Construction

the woman is a construction
must be

the woman is basically meant to be
a housing complex
all the same
everything plastered
just change the color

particularly I'm a woman
of bricks on display
in social gatherings having to be
the most hardly dressed

I say I'm a journalist

(the woman is a construction
with too many holes

leaks

the revista nova* is the ministry
of cloacal affairs
pardon me
do not talk about shit in the revista nova*)

you are a woman
and if you suddenly wake up binary and blue
and spend the day turning the light on and off?

(do you like being brazilian?
to be called virginia woolf?)

the woman is a construction
makeup is camouflage
every woman has a gay friend
how good it is to have friends

all friends have a gay friend
who has a woman
who calls him fred astaire

at this point, it's already late
the psychologists of the freud coffee shop
look and smile

nothing is going to change–

nothing will ever change–

the woman is a construction

Translated by Rosaliene Bacchus

Grad

men women are born they grow
they see how others are born
and how they disappear
from this mystery a cemetery arises
they bury bodies then forget

men women are born they grow
they see how others are born
and how they disappear
they record, record with their phones
make spreadsheets then forget

they hope their time comes slowly
men women
don’t know what comes next
so they go to grad school

men women are born they grow
they know that one day they’re born
and the next they disappear
but that’s not why they forget
to turn off the lights and the gas

Translated by Daniel Medin

One More (tiny) Thing

don’t calculate what you’ve lost in buying a box of pins (made in china)
and from where exactly they emerge with heads (flat)
and your cursing mao tse when a drop of blood appears (from the finger)
and when you find a pin in the street, leave it there (it’s not dead)
the same kind of pin pointing to the blouses (in your closet)
and brushing your skin it produces a red (so rare)
and someone is dreaming of pins (in china)
in this life only valued by a dozen (clearly)

Translated by Farnoosh Fathi

Armando Freitas Filho: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Armando Freitas Filho Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Armando Freitas Filho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1940. Throughout his career, he has experimented with different poetic practices that range from Concrete Poetry to Poesia Práxis to the Marginal Poetry of the late 1970s mimeograph generation. He has twice been awarded the Jabuti Prize, one of the most important literary prizes in Brazil, and shortlisted on numerous occasions. His work reads through the urban imperatives of human landscapes in the city; a post-modern approach heavily influenced by the modernism of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, the aesthetic rigour of João Cabral de Melo Neto, and Ana Cristina César's experimental portraits of everyday life. His first work, Palavra, was published in 1963.

Your face

Your face
is a piece of music
mute
as the wind
Yet I hear it
from afar, not forgetting
even without seeing
and I follow, by heart
the sigh of this ah-
more torn
blind and alone

In the mirror

In the mirror
unimaginable enigmage?
No. Nor. But.
I will never write myself again.
I will wear grey
a Dorian Grey subject
(occluded) from rain and thunder
and I'll only stop when my blood
shuts its mouth as a whole.
Letters have already saved me
from the precipice:
SOS VIP RSVP
Black tie, etc.

The city goes on sleeping/awake

The city goes on sleeping/awake
with the lights on
its street-lights, fountains, statues
with all its circuits working
and the sea.
The metro doesn't move a metre.
Only the buses sleepwalk
slow, circular
with no need of direction:
they know their way by heart
they don't even look like the buses that, by day,
run flattened, intersected and in close-up
in the paintings of Collares.
Translated by Francisco Vilhena

Arnaldo Antunes: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Arnaldo Antunes Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Arnaldo Antunes (September 2, 1960) is a Brazilian musician, writer, and composer. He has published poetry and had his first book published in 1983. Antunes's poetry is the magic, he wields with apparently simple elements combines into challenging verbal artifacts. The polysemous of words is abounds in Antunes's poetry. Antunes also has worked with concrete and digital poetics over the years,  he most notable for the sheer diversity of his work.

Everything 

All things in 
the world don't 
fit into an one
idea. But every-
thing fits in one 
word, in this 
word fits everything.

Translated by Jéssica Iancoski