Recommendation letter

 

Glória Sofia stills an unknown Cape Verdean poet with only tree publish books.

In their book “Poesia das Lágrimas” (Poetry of the tears), the poetry is a sentiment or a sensibility that strives to evoke sympathy in the reader, thus prompting the reader to commiserate with the emotional state of the speaker and her suffering, or to empathise with the speaker's feelings for another person.

The Portuguese, when writhed, has a special touch of the Cape Verdean Creolo, and put in their words poetry and music. She is a mother in bloom. She is “a blanket shedding light”. She is a “land strewn with joy”. Like poetry, she is “sad and misleading while disastrous” and play the words with an unlimited challenge.

Glória Monteiro wants the language of prohibitions because her feels that written is “risking is life”. She has no fear of being tested. She is able to “fishing without a hook”.

The Cape Verdean poet think that friendship it is “the sum of colours and laughs”, it is “the taste of the stars” and an “embroidery on the towel soul of the tertullian's”. She is able to be “an African woman with round eyes, overflowing tears”.

In the “Poetry of the tears” Africa is the mother of Glória, an “unmarried mother”, a “tired mother”, a “mother of many hopes” or a “mother of little strength”. Their homeland, Cape Verde,   is a “tree of wonderful peace” and “the delight of life”.

Glória is able, as in their poetry, to “held the sun with a rainbow bow”, to produce “a chord among the screams” or being “a cushion without filling”.

The sea is always present in their work as “the fear of children´s grabbed by the hands of sailors”, “the women’s revolt, hooked by the confidence of their fishermen’s” or as “the soul plenty of pain”.

Glória could be “a black pearl lost in the shells” or could be a lost poet with lost poems, but she is determinate to work hard and improve her skills in the poetry world. She is interested in foreign cultures and languages, she dreams to work with the best’s poets or writers. She is, indeed, a “dreamer with a penny”.

In the poetry book “Laços de Poesia” (Ties of poetry), publish by the Editora Brial, “the unglued lights and fainting’s were besprent with laughter and joy to give birth at poetry”. In this time, Glória Monteiro, living in The Nederland says “The Diasporas grabbed me with hatred in his heart” and she wants to go home, but he found that their home “is nearby their love”.

“Ties of poetry” explores the entanglement between Europe and Cape Verdean sea, the “with lightness of melancholy”, explores the concepts of far and near, the past, present and future:

“Far seemed eternal

Today looks close

Tomorrow sounds crazy”

Cape Verde is very present in the “Ties of poetry” and sounds like a morna (the morna is a music and dance genre from Cape Verde) whose lyrics are usually in Cape Verdean Creole, like sounds, a little bit, the Glória poetry. Like in the poem of Florbela Espanca, “to be a poet It is being hungry, being thirsty for Infinity!”, Glória Monteiro “live in an eternal infinite, like a dream”, “feeding heir soreness each season”.

We can see in Glória poetry that the eternal “disappears in the perpetual blue”, the faraway it is a simple’s journey, and the return, a rebellion. The Glória poems are rebellious poetry.

 

Félix Rodrigues

Professor of the Department of Agricultural Sciences and Environment,

University of the Azores

Angra do Heroísmo

Email: felix@uac.pt