1.
Your poetry comes from an observer/minimalist. This is my observation as a reader of your poetry. What do you think?
It seems clear to me that my poetry always starts from observation. First of all, of myself and, no less inevitably, of what surrounds me. The term ‘minimalist’ does not seem to me to be misaligned, either in the sense of seeking simplicity or in the musical meaning of something that repeats itself. There is probably even deliberate attention to the least detail. But this is something we find, with other formulations and intentions in countless poets and writers.
2.
Has anyone influenced you in Portuguese or other languages? May be, Cesario Verde, Bernardo Soares, Pessoa, Joao Miguel Fernandes Jorge
Positively or negatively, almost everything ends up influencing us. Many of the poets I read during my adolescence taught me how not to write poetry. This too, in a very important and influential mode of influence. But in fact, what has influenced me the most was music, although it is not easy to explain this permanent contagion. In different times and modes Cesario Verde or Joao Miguel Fernandes Jorge (and still are) very important poets to me. I have never felt any specific debt to Fernando Pessoa. I think he is a bit over rated. Camilo Pessanha seems to me to be one of the top names in Portuguese Poetry. And I believe that one of the most fertile periods of poetry written in my language was that of the troubadour lyric. And there are Camoons, of course. As far as other languages are concerned, I would like to highlight some of the discoveries that have marked me forever. Francois Villon, Charles Baudelaire, Emily Dickinson, Jaime Gil de Biedma, Philip Larkin.
3.
How the poetry of the 90’s and beyond shaped and changed the scene of Portuguese Poetry? Say, going through Joao Miguel Fernandes Jorge and Joaquim Manuel Magalhaes.
This question is first of all, based on a considerable temporal gap. Joao Miguel Fernandes Jorge and Joaquim Magalhaes debuted as poets in the 70’s. At the same time another great poet emerged. Antonio Franco Alexandre. I do not know, honestly, if what came next “shaped and changed the scene of Portuguese Poetry.” Other poets appeared. Only that.
4.
Returning to reality, and not to a more abstract poetry of language, and language, which in my opinion could have played a part in the removal of poetry from the public. Poetry returns to the micro-narrative. (From Jorge Gomes Miranda and Rui Pires Cabral)
I have a great distrust of this concept of ‘return’ (to the ‘real’, the ‘everyday’, the ‘myth-narrative’). It seems to me a simplistic and reductive view. Do you want a better ‘micro-narrative’ than Cesario Verde’s ‘Sentimento de um Occident”? Also in the poetry of Fernando Assis Pacheco we find magnificent ‘micro-narratives’. As for the ‘removal of public from poetry’, this is already guaranteed. Poets do not have to worry about that. With very few expectations, only the poor contemporary poets can have a vast audience.
5.
What do you think of insignificant aspects of everyday life that have acquired a sudden power of revelation and epiphany?
I reserve that for the poems. I have no opinion on things that just happen. They happen because they have to happen. In life or in the poem, if there is a difference.
6.
Mixing time and space with an eye on reason and tradition. What do you think of that?
Reason, as a poet, does not concern me at all. Otherwise, I have never really liked it that much (although it has, as everyone else, opinions). Tradition, on the contrary, is something I cannot and should not ignore. If I write in the language of Martim Codax, Camoes or Mario Cesariny, I have an immense responsibility. But it should also be remembered that there existed Dante, Eliot or Michaux. Ultimately we speak to the dead with the dead. The living who actually hear us are counted on the fingers. They are very few.
7.
In the 2000s, poetry regained a strong social tone. Especially Jose Miguel Silva and Manuel de Freitas with the seal of subjectivity and individual voice. What do you have to say about this?
I do not see myself at all in this ‘strong social tone’. I am, in general, quite sceptical and have never voted, nor do I intend to vote, in any political party. It is nice of you to give us a ‘seal of subjectivity and individual voice’. But any poet, if he is, will eventually succeed. What I have to say about this is the following. Jose Miguel Silva and I debuted almost at about the same time and soon felt affinities. I ‘guessed’ (especially in ‘Game Over and ‘Immodesty’) that Lisbon and the World were irreversibly de-characterised. There is a finissecular, decadent side that has been accentuated and confirmed in the worst way over the years. Jose Miguel Silva will be even more apocalyptic than me (and is, certainly, a better poet), but it unites us with the extreme awareness that this can only end badly. You do not have to be too smart to have that view of the World.
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