Poet Ferreira Gullar elected to Brazilian Academy of Letters

The Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) granted poet Ferreira Gullar after a vote held Friday (Oct 9) chair number 37, empty since July 3, when poet and translator Ivan Junqueira died. Gullar received 36 of 37 possible ballots.

Ferreira Gullar, whose real name is José Ribamar Ferreira, was born in the northeastern state of Maranhão on September 10, 1930. At the age of 18, he became involved in the literary milieux of the capital. A year later, he discovered modern poetry, after reading poems by Carlos Dummond de Andrade and Manuel Bandeira.

In 1954, Ferreira Gullar released his A Luta Corporal (“The Bodily Struggle”), which brought him national fame. The last poems in this work are seen as the introduction of concrete poetry into Brazilian literature. A dissident, he became a member of a group of plastic artists and poets in Rio de Janeiro referred to as the neo-concrete. Among their most remarkable works are those of Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, now renowned worldwide.

After leaving the neo-concrete movement, Gullar joined the revolutionary political fight in the years preceding and following the military coup d'etat in 1964. A member of the Brazilian Communist Party, he was prosecuted and arrested. He was subsequently forced to live under concealment, and sought exile outside the country.

During his exile period in Buenos Aires, he wrote his nearly-100-page-long Dirty Poem ("Poema Sujo", in the original Portuguese), regarded as his masterpiece. It has been translated into a number of languages and published in several countries. The poem also played a key role in the his return to Brazil.

In 1977, After coming back to the country, he was imprisoned and tortured. Released as a result of international pressure, he resumed his work in the press in Rio de Janeiro and on television, as a screenwriter.

In 2002, Ferreira Gullar was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2010 he was awarded the Camões Prize, given every year to writers deemed as having contributed to enriching the literary heritage of the Portuguese language.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira