The Cartography of Being

This bilingual anthology of fifty one poems selected from Júdice’s extensive poetic opus covers the years of 1967 to 2005 and contains the original Portuguese poems face à face with their English translations. Although his works have been translated into twelve languages in twenty countries, Júdice’s poetry is underrepresented in the English language. At present, this anthology stands as the only book of his poetry available in the English language. The extended, contemplative tone in many of Júdice’s poems, his unhurried meditation on the subject at hand will appeal to the reader who seeks refuge from the present day diet of fast-food culture. Judice’s poetry is a welcome counterpoint to the hurried existence of our modern lives. In this collection of bilingual poems the reader will find words that slowly melt into the page as though he or she contemplated an unhurried winter icicle melt from the eaves or the heavens, departing one form to embody another, before dropping into the reader’s mind to moisten a new consciousness and renewed understanding of being. 


Nuno Júdice was born in 1949 Algarve, Portugal. A professor at Lisbon’s Universidade Nova, he served from 1997 to 2004 as the cultural attaché of the Portuguese Embassy in Paris. One of the most important contemporary poetic voices in Portuguese literature he has written more than fifty books of poetry, fiction, essays, criticism and drama. His poetry has garnered over a dozen prizes and, although translated into twelve languages, is underrepresented in English. 


Paulo Da Costa was born in Angola and raised in Portugal. He is a writer, editor and translator living on the West Coast of Canada. paulo's first book of fiction The Scent of a Lie received the 2003 Commonwealth First Book Prize for the Canada-Caribbean Region and the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize. His poetry and fiction have been published in literary magazines around the world and have been translated to Italian, Chinese, Spanish, Serbian, Slovenian and Portuguese. www.paulodacosta.com