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Adriana Lisboa

Adriana Lisboa was born in Rio de Janeiro, and has degrees in music and literature. She was hailed as a new star of Brazilian literature after the publication of her 2001 novel Symphony in White, which received the prestigious José Saramago Prize. Her novel Crow Blue, translated into English by Alison Entrekin, was chosen a book of the year by the Independent. Her poems and stories appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation, Granta, Asymptote and The Indian Quarterly. Her books – novels, poetry collections, short stories and works for children – have been translated in more than twenty countries.

  • Equator

    About the Book

    Reading Adriana Lisboa’s poems one becomes aware that in the clear light of their precise articulations something secret is taking place. That “something / taking place in secret” can be as anguished as the poems are calm; as wild as the poems are poised. She dares ask any question and – even more courageously – dares answer (or accept that there is none). Poems that are tethered to terra firma can cut loose without warning; knowing can ambush you from anywhere. There are no dirty tricks in her work, no showy gestures. Instead, there is the animating intelligence of life lived acutely, on and through words, this impossible sustenance that poets seek, and only rarely – as in Lisboa’s case – find. In her able translator Alison Entrekin’s hands, Adriana Lisboa’s poetry offers an exhilarating oxygen, “freeing in the word / what the word seals in”.

    Sampurna Chattarji, poetry editor of The Indian Quarterly

    $12