Born in Oporto in 1919, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen moved to Lisbon to study at the university, and she continues to live in the city today. Considered one of Portugal’s most important 20th century poets, she has won numerous literary prizes and is widely translated. The poetry of her thirteen published collections, imbued with a rare luminosity and precision, is at once ‘profound’ and ‘superficial’, effectively eliminating the distinction between inner and outer.

“Poetry,” she explains, “is my understanding with the universe, my way of relating to things, my participation in reality, my encounter with voices and images. That is why the poem speaks not of an ideal life but of a concrete one: the angle of a window, the resonance of streets, cities and rooms, the shade cast by a wall, a sudden face, the stars’ silence, distance and brightness, the night’s breathing, the scent of the linden and of oregano.”