Adélia Luzia Prado Freitas (born 13 December 1935) is a Brazilian writer and poet.
Life
She was born in
Divinópolis
Divinópolis is a Municipalities of Brazil, 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 ...
,
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais () is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil, being the fourth largest state by area and the second largest in number of inhabitants with a population of 20,539,989 according to the 2022 Brazilian census, 2022 census. Located in ...
(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
A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...
. 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
Adélia Prado has a long relationship with American poet and translator
Ellen Doré Watson
Ellen Doré Watson is an American poet, translator and teacher.
Career
Watson is author of six collections of poems, most recently, ''pray me stay eager'' (Alice James Books). Her book, ''Ladder Music,'' was a New York/New England Award winner fro ...
, 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, Massachu ...
, 2013)
* ''The Mystical Rose: Selected Poems'' (
Bloodaxe Books
Bloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specializing in poetry.
History
Bloodaxe Books was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, who is still editor and managing director. Bloodaxe moved its editorial office to Northumbe ...
, 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 new works by Jack Kerouac, ...
'', ''
Antaeus
Antaeus (; , derived from ), known to the Berbers as Anti, was a figure in Traditional Berber religion, Berber and Greek mythology. He was famed for his defeat by Heracles as part of the Labours of Hercules.
Family
In Greek sources, he was ...
'', ''Field'', and ''
American Poetry Review
''The American Poetry Review'' (''APR'') is an American poetry magazine printed every other month on tabloid-sized newsprint. It was founded in 1972 by Stephen Berg and Stephen Parker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The magazine's editor is Elizab ...
''. 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
Moreira Salles Institute
The Moreira Salles Institute (, IMS) is a Brazilian nonprofit organization founded by diplomat and banker Walter Moreira Salles in 1992, with the establishment of its first cultural center in the city of Poços de Caldas, Minas Gerais. Later, the ...
.
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 a Canadian poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin.
Before 2022, two separate awards went to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language. I ...
.
In 2024 she was awarded the
Camões Prize
The Camões Prize (, ), named after Luís de Camões, is the most prestigious prize for literature in the Portuguese language. The prize was established in 1989 and is supported by the governments of Brazil and Portugal. It is awarded annually to ...
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 discipli ...