Adélia Luzia Prado Freitas (born 13 December 1935) is a Brazilian writer and poet.

Life

She was born in

Divinópolis Divinópolis is a municipality in the centre-west of Minas Gerais state, Brazil. The estimated population in 2020 was 240,408 inhabitants. The total area of the municipality is 709 km2 and the elevation is 712 metres. It is 120 km from s ...

Minas Gerais Minas Gerais () is a state in Southeastern Brazil. It ranks as the second most populous, the third by gross domestic product (GDP), and the fourth largest by area in the country. The state's capital and largest city, Belo Horizonte (literally ...

(one of the landlocked states of Brazil), where she still lives. Her family were railroad laborers, and both her mother and grandmother died during childbirth. She was the first member of her family to attend university, gaining degrees in Philosophy and Religious Education from the University of Divinópolis. She taught school until 1979, and was the Cultural Liaison for the City of Divinópolis from 1983 to 1988.

Literary career

Her poetry was "discovered" in 1976, when at the age of 40 she sent a small collection of her poems to poet Affonso Romano de Sant’Anna. De Sant'Anna passed her work on to the Brazilian modernist poet

Carlos Drummond de Andrade Carlos Drummond de Andrade () (October 31, 1902 – August 17, 1987) was a Brazilian poet and writer, considered by some as the greatest Brazilian poet of all time. He has become something of a national cultural symbol in Brazil, where his wi ...

, who read it and proclaimed in his weekly newspaper column that St. Francis was dictating lines to a housewife in Minas Gerais. Her work is a seeming paradox of a deep and spiritual Catholicism combined with the physical and the carnal. She herself has tried to resolve this contradiction, writing that "It's the soul that's erotic." She is especially focused on the everyday concerns of women. Adélia has published eight volumes of poetry and seven volumes of prose, starting with her first poetry collection ''Bagagem'' (Baggage). In describing her work,

Robert Hass Robert L. Hass (born March 1, 1941) is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He won the 2007 National Book Award and shared the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for the collection ''Time and Materials: Poems 1997 ...

said "Brazil has produced what might seem impossible: a really sexy, mystical, Catholic poet." Though she does her best to avoid the limelight, Prado is considered one of Brazil's foremost poets. Her work has been translated into English, Italian, and Spanish, and has been written about extensively in the critical and popular press in Brazil. Adélia Prado has a long relationship with American poet and translator Ellen Doré Watson, who has translated several collections of Prado's poetry. They are: * ''The Alphabet in the Park: Selected Poems of Adélia Prado'' (

Wesleyan University Press Wesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist. History and overview Founded (in its present form ...

, 1990) * ''Ex-Voto: Poems of Adélia Prado'' (

Tupelo Press Tupelo Press is an American not-for-profit literary press founded in 1999. It produced its first titles in 2001, publishing poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Originally located in Dorset, Vermont, the press has since moved to North Adams, Massachus ...

, 2013) * ''The Mystical Rose: Selected Poems'' ( Bloodaxe Books, 2014) Prado's work has also been published in translation in ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Phil ...

'', ''

Antaeus Antaeus (; Ancient Greek: Ἀνταῖος ''Antaîos'', "opponent", derived from , ''antao'' – 'I face, I oppose'), known to the Berbers as Anti, was a figure in Berber and Greek mythology. He was famed for his defeat by Heracles as part ...

'', ''Field'', and '' American Poetry Review''. It has been included in ''The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry'' and ''The Farrar Straus Giroux Book of Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry''.

Awards and recognitions

The Brazilian National Library's ''Jornal de Poesia'' (Poetry Journal) polled intellectuals in 1998 to compile ''A Lista Dos 20'' (the "List of Twenty") foremost living poets. Prado ranked fourth. In 2000, Adélia was featured in the prestigious Brazilian "Cadernos de Literatura Brasileira" produced by the Instituto Moreira Salles. Prado was a featured reader at FLIP (Paraty International Literary Festival) in 2006, an event that drew large interest to her work. In 2014, she received the Griffin Lifetime Recognition Award, presented by the trustees of the

Griffin Poetry Prize The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. Before 2022, the awards went to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language. ...

References

External links

Interviewed by Ellen Doré Watson
for

BOMB Magazine ''Bomb'' (stylized in all caps as ''BOMB'') is an American arts magazine edited by artists and writers, published quarterly in print and daily online. It is composed primarily of interviews between creative people working in a variety of disciplin ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Prado, Adelia 1935 births Living people Brazilian Roman Catholics 20th-century Brazilian poets Portuguese-language writers Catholic poets Brazilian women poets 20th-century Brazilian women writers