Poetry
Arquipélago
Not translated into English
Jorge Barbosa · 1935
Synopsis
Short poems in which the sea is not a landscape but a wall. It encircles the islands, prevents anyone from leaving, and reminds us on every page that one is shut in on a dry, overpopulated land. Recurring are the boat one watches pass without boarding it, the rain one waits for, the empty houses of those who have left, and a way of speaking of absence without raising one's voice.
Context
The collection appeared a year before the founding of Claridade, of which its author was one of the three initiators: the aim was to stop imitating the models of Lisbon and to describe the islands as they are. It is the first book of poems to do so, and it fixed for thirty years the motifs of this literature, drought, waiting and departure. Its author was a customs officer, like many writers of his generation in the archipelago, and published three books in thirty years.
Who it is for
Short poems, in a sober language. The motif of the sea as obstacle recurs in almost every text.
Prizes and reception
The book with which modern Cape Verdean poetry begins; its author appears on a banknote of the archipelago and sits in the Cape Verdean Academy of Letters.