Divinópolis (Brazil), 1935

By Flávio Aguiar

Between family, books, and activities in the cultural sphere of her hometown, Divinópolis, her work does not engage with the experimentalism or ideological commitment of the 1970s, nor with the feminist struggle of writer Marina Colassanti. Taking a very particular stance in Brazilian literature, she presents a worldview close to that of Manoel de Barros and Mário Quintana, as she asserts that she sees the everyday as the very condition of literature.

Her first book, Bagagem (1976), whose manuscript she sent to poet Affonso Romano de Sant’Anna, was considered phenomenal by Carlos Drummond de Andrade. However, the criticism of the time was not generous to her work, accusing it of being superficial and populist. Faithful to the concept of the poet as an instrument of God, in 1978, she published O coração disparado, and in 1979, her first prose work, Solte os cachorros, responding to novelist Lya Luft’s concern about how to write “about what she imagined a simple woman to be,” without submitting to any form of oppression.

In 2005, she published Quero minha mãe (prose); in 2010, A duração do dia (poetry); and in 2011, Carmela vai à escola (children’s literature). In 2013, she released Miserere (poetry), which was nominated for the 2014 Jabuti Award. Another work: Oráculos de maio (1999).

Content updated on 20/05/2017 23:50.

Translation by ChatGPT.