By TPN/Lusa,
in Arts & Lifestyle, Art ·
05-03-2021 01:00:00 · 0 Comments
The Portuguese writer Maria Teresa Horta has won the Casino da Póvoa 2021 Literary Prize, for the book “Estranhezas”, attributed within the scope of the Correntes d’Escritas literary meeting, in Póvoa de Varzim.
The competition jury decided to distinguish the work of the 83-year-old author who lives in Lisbon, considering that “Estranhezas” “is an exaltation of passion, beauty, of the concrete and ephemeral real eternalised by the displacement of the sphere of time to spaces of writing”.
“The seven parts of this book revisit and shift the central themes of the work and Maria Teresa Horta who, since her first book [‘Mirror Initial’, 1960], has created a very personal glossary and syntax, a unique language, which subverts and updates the idea and poetry as a celebratory song, playing with the conventions of rhyme and rhythm”, according to the jury.
Maria Teresa Horta, a writer, journalist and prominent Portuguese feminist, was born on May 20, 1937, in Lisbon. With a vast work of poetry and fiction, which she first began in 1960 and which already seen her produce 40 edited books, she was distinguished, even last year, with the Cultural Merit Medal, awarded by the Ministry of Culture.
In 2011, she received the D. Dinis Award, from the Casa de Mateus Foundation, for her work “The Lights of Leonor”, which was also distinguished with the Maximum Literature Award, in the same year. In 2014, she received the Career Consecration Award from the Portuguese Society of Authors (SPA) and, in 2017, with the book “Anunciações”, she won the Autores SPA Award / Best Book of Poetry.
Since 2004 she is a Grand Officer of the Order of Infante D. Henrique, in a distinction delivered by the then President of the Republic, Jorge Sampaio. In Correntes d’Escritas, Maria Teresa Horta succeeds the Angolan Pepetela, who, in 2020, with the book “Sua excelência de corpo presente”won the maximum prize of the festival, which has an associated prize of €20,000.
