(translation) antónio ramos rosa I

António Ramos Rosa was born in 1924 along the southern coast of Portugal, the Algarve. I went there often as a child, even wrote some prose about it once. It is an inspiring place, but that inspiration reached Ramos Rosa with different streaks, different impressions. He is still regarded by many as a poet’s poet:

fiama hasse pais brandão I (translation)

Portuguese literature lacks no female contributions; in fact, to every great female portuguese author, I can name an equally grand male counterpart, and this pairing game can go on for as long as there is a memory capable of absorbing that many names. None stands out, to me, as glowingly as Fiama. Born in 1938

8, Setembro (loquat, violet, Bèla)

My artifice was underacted. Only when the sycamore expired did I gloss its brief sussurus. My muffled blood takes to the bludgeon of evening and, dry, proceeds to the integration. Sound has since slogged through five varieties of despair. A scream would be mute by the force of merely being. I take note of things

(translation) poem, daniel faria (2)

By popular demand, I shall put here another translation I had given up on and decided to complete upon seeing the warm reaction in my last translation of Daniel Faria. As I’m noticing that more-and-more folks are becoming interested not only in Portuguese poetry and the translated works themselves, but my method of translation and

smoky balances (english poetry)

It’s a very simple poem, likely one of the simplest I’ve posted recently, but it’s a good practice to have some levity once in a while, some balance. My eyes tend to get tired of the denser colours. Thank you for reading,João-Maria.

to taste of salt (english poetry)

I spent a good deal of December avoiding the written arts entirely; there was this sentiment of emotional threshold, a sensation that the stacks of words I was creating were cindery distillations of ire or sadness. The purge I necessitated to convalesce informed my Art, but I thought it should be contrary, that my Art

mum is a leopard (english poetry)

If anyone has been reading me for over a year, you might have detected that the structure of this poem draws much from my older English compositions, such as Emerald Cage and Low Poetics. I wanted to design something that returned to that a bit, and simultaneously, I wanted to write as if I was

catkins (english|portuguese poetry)

CATKINS AMENTILHOS Again, not quite as potent as I would have it; writing compositions over days (or, at times, weeks) allows for a more refined method of writing, but some assaulting sensations end up becoming elements of works where they don’t necessarily belong, which makes the process muddy. Sieving said sensations, percolating them, becomes a

(Droplet) the waves of creation.

«‘But Bernard goes on talking. Up they bubble — images. “Like a camel,” . . . “a vulture.” The camel is a vulture; the vulture a camel; for Bernard is a dangling wire, loose, but seductive. Yes, for when he talks, when he makes his foolish comparisons, a lightness comes over one. One floats, too,

(Droplet) home. (english|português)

An author is a company to the nothingness, indigent because it is company to nothing, and possesses that nothingness, imperious, impermissible, obedient to the reasons of things, bled-out in the salts of colours while assuming itself king and progenitor of them. It is a whimsy, being an author, authorise the creation of nothingness and gift