Portuguese Poetry:  sailing along with Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen

A talk by Sandra Boto

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen was an award-winning Portuguese poet and writer. In 2014 she was unanimously chosen by by Parliament to be given National Pantheon honours - only the second woman (after Amália Rodrigues) to be so honoured. She was born in Porto in 1919 and died in Lisbon in 2004, having won acclaim as a storyteller and she was the first woman to receive the highest Portuguese award for poetry, the Prémio Camões. Poetry is my understanding of the universe, my way of relating to things, my participation in reality, my encounter with voices and images. The sea is the most central theme in her poetical works. Sandra Boto was a Professora Auxiliar art the University of the Algarve where she graduated in Modern Languages and Literature and Portuguese Studies. She also holds a post-doctoral grant for a research project on the Portuguese Romantic writer Almeida Garrett. One of her main fields of work is Portuguese folk poetry, along with Portuguese and Spanish Literature in a comparative perspective. Sandra worked for the last year at Barcelona University coordinating the Portuguese Language Centre. She has now returned to the Algarve to complete her post-doctoral research.