Ana Luísa Amaral, who has died aged 66 of cancer, was one of Portugal’s foremost poets. Her work, linguistically adventurous and playful, was widely translated, with three collections published in English: The Art of Being a Tiger (2018), What’s in a Name (2019) and World (forthcoming in 2023).
Ana Luísa began writing poems at the age of five; when she was 12, she would not go on holiday without her bag of poems; and when she was 14, she typed them all out on an old Singer typewriter. For many years, she taught English and American studies and comparative literature at the University of Porto, but she once said that, while her academic life was her career, poetry was what she did, the thing she simply had to do.
If I should die
I want my daughter always to remember me
for someone to sing to her even if they can’t hold a tune
to offer her pure dreams
rather than a fixed timetable
To give her love and the ability
to look inside things
to dream of blue suns and brilliant skies
instead of teaching her to add up
or how to peel potatoes
The woman sitting
opposite me
plays with her handbag,
distractedly
Is she distracted? Or the handbag?
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