Herberto Hélder

Herberto Helder
Born Herberto Helder de Oliveira
November 23, 1930
Funchal, Madeira, Portugal
Died March 23, 2015 (aged 84)
Cascais, Portugal
Occupation Poet, writer
Nationality Portuguese
Period 1958–2015
Notable awards Pessoa Prize (1994)

Herberto Helder de Oliveira (November 23, 1930 – March 23, 2015) was a Portuguese poet.[1] He was born in Funchal, Madeira.

Biography

Herberto Helder was born in the Portuguese Atlantic island of Madeira.[2] In 1946 he traveled to Lisbon to complete his secondary studies and subsequently in 1948 moved to Coimbra to study Law at university. In 1949 he had changed to the Humanities University to study Romance Philology but dropped out after three years without completing the course. After returning to Lisbon he took up several temporal jobs, and got in contact with a circle of artists and writers such as Mário Cesariny, Luiz Pacheco, João Vieira and Hélder Macedo. This group revolved around Surrealism which would inform his early writings. In 1958 his first book, O Amor em Visita was published. In the following years he traveled and lived in France, Holland and Belgium taking menial jobs to survive.

Works

Herberto Helder's poetry and fiction is very visual, and has connections with Surrealism, still his style is difficult to define; he was a practitioner of experimental poetry and some call him an orphic or visionary poet (that somehow reminds Ezra Pound).

Considered one of the most important contemporary Portuguese poets his poetry is not yet enough studied by academics due to the obscurity of his personality itself (he refused to take literary prizes or have media exposure) and the complexity of his paradoxal work that has a strange enchantment.

Published works

Poetry

Fiction

References

  1. VITÓRIA, ANA (May 7, 2009). "Robô poeta de Leonel Moura lança livro". Jornal de Notícias (in Portuguese). Retrieved July 9, 2011.
  2. "A short biography of Herberto Helder". Citi.pt - Lisbon University (in Portuguese). Retrieved August 20, 2014.