Preface to Calligraphy of the Birds

Fernando Dacosta

Remarkable for her subtlety, Ângela de Almeida advances in the Portuguese literary world by unveiling herself to better conceal herself through an unequaled aesthetic, ethic, and poetics.

Endowed with unique resources that her intelligence and experience highlight, she creates her own spaces for herself and her work, achieving an uncommon affirmation of writing and imagery.

Her latest book, Calligraphy of the Birds, contains some of the best poems recently appearing among us.

Going through it, we find singular illuminations, as in the Cycle of Hours, where a remarkable poem becomes a cantata of infinite perturbation.

“A woman hugging a window goes by/ and a man with the roof on his shoulders/ a circus without a clown goes by/ as does a wheel/ the last carriage of a / hallucinated train goes by (...)”

Ângela de Almeida is a person who knows how to find paths, to assert herself as

One knows that nobody comes out of nothing. We must remember that poetry is, together with the chronicle, the great pillar of Portuguese literature.

Ângela de Almeida is part of the plethora of its creators who resist, write, and publish.

With an exceptional command of the word, she retains images, ideas, and feelings that she communicates slowly, in suspended complicity.

Concise and contained, her work has made her a reference author within our culture.

Fernando Dacosta (translation by Diniz Borges)