Casimiro de Brito

Casimiro Cavaco Correia de Brito (born January 14, 1938 in Loulé , Algarve , Portugal ) is a Portuguese writer . He is best known as a poet and translator of haikus in Portugal. He is also a narrator, novelist, aphorist and essayist. He was also president of the Portuguese PEN club for a long time. Brito is valued and known in Europe and beyond for his commitment to peace and as a writer.

Life

Casimiro de Brito was born in Loulé, a small town in the Algarve. When he was 10, the family moved to Faro , where he lived until he finished school. As a teenager he discovered literature and especially the sea and the tides and surf inspired the boy to write his first poems. Writing became an addiction for this adolescent and so he preferred a business education to an academic one. He didn't want to waste time on universities, just write. In order to be able to fulfill his dream of becoming a writer, he became independent from his parents very early on, which is rather unusual in Portugal. He later worked as a bank clerk for a good 35 years; his national and international fame as a writer came later. In 1958 he lived in London for a year , where he also attended Westfield College. It was there that his passion for haikus began. From 1968 to 1971 he lived in Germany . He then returned to Portugal forever and has lived in Lisbon ever since .

He was a member of the legendary, opposition literary group Poesia 61 , which saw itself as opposed to the literature of the Salazar regime. He was also the co-founder of various literary magazines, such as Cadernos do Meio-Dia (with António Ramos Rosa ) and Loreto 13, as well as the head of the Portuguese-language section of the Serta magazine . He was director of three international poetry festivals in Portugal (in Lisbon, Porto and Faro), he was president of the Association Europeene pour la Promotion de la Poesie in Leuven . Many of his books can be found in the largest library in the world, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC .

Member of the Academica Brasileira da Filologia in Rio de Janeiro . From 1994 to 2009 he was President of the Portuguese section of the PEN Club. The author speaks fluent Japanese and has been close friends with António Ramos Rosa since the 1950s. In 2006 he was named World Ambassador for Peace in Geneva .

The work of Brito

Brito has published a good 56 books to date and in well over 150 anthologies worldwide. His poems have been translated into many languages, such as Japanese, Albanian, Spanish, Italian, French, English, German, Croatian, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, Serbian, Modern Greek, Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese. He gained international fame as the editor of the anthology Diversity of the PEN-Club International. The main themes of his work are varied. He deals with the sea, love, ignorance, death, silence, vice, the word, revolution, nothing, nature and mystery. He made his debut as a writer in 1957 with a volume of poetry. As a translator, he made the work of Matsuo Basho known in Portugal. Many texts also made it into official school books in Portugal. So far, “Zwei Gewässer, ein Fluß” has been published in German in 2008, a volume of poetry co-authored by António Ramos Rosa.

Awards (selection)

Premio Internationale Versilia, Viareggio, 1985.
International Leopold Sedar Senghor Award, 2002.
Premio Europeu de Poesia Sibila Alanamo- Mario Luzi, 2004.
Poeteka Prize, 2008 (from Albania)
Holder of the Ordem do Infante Dom Henrique, 2008.

Works (selection)

Poemas da Solidão Imperfeita, 1957, poems.
Telegramas, 1959, poems.
Canto Adolescente, 1961, poems.
Vietname, em nome da liberdade (Vietnam, in the name of freedom!), 1967, poems.
Um certo país ao sul, 1975, short stories.
Mesa do Amor, 1977, poems.
Labyrinthos, 1981, poems.
Pátria Sensível, 1983, novel
Na via do mestre, 2000, poems.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Brito, Casimiro de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Portuguese writer
DATE OF BIRTH	January 14, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH	Loulé , Algarve, Portugal