The jury, made up of Helena Buescu, José Cândido Oliveira Martins, and Ana Isabel Soares, awarded the prize unanimously and in the first round, praising “the courage to revive a certain poetry of thought without the melancholic diversion of nostalgia, in an elegant discourse worthy of the author’s work.”
“The dialogue that the poet establishes with the dying muse, Erato, unfolds as between equal workers of the poetic verb, equally skilled in handling their differences. It is an elegy stripped of sadness or nostalgia, skillfully articulating colloquial steps with the elevation of the classical verb,” the jury notes in their reasoning.
Poet and fiction writer A. M. Pires Cabral was born in Chacim, Macedo de Cavaleiros, in 1941. He graduated in Germanic Philology, served as a teacher and cultural animator, was responsible for Vila Real’s participation in the Council of Europe’s Project 5.2 (“Cultural Policies in Cities”), and co-organized the Camilianas Days of Vila Real.
A winner of various literary awards, A. M. Pires Cabral has published, in the field of fiction, eight books of short stories and six novels, while in the field of poetry, in which he debuted in 1974, he has published 20 titles to date.
The Grande Prémio de Poesia António Ramos Rosa, worth 12,500 euros, established by the APE and sponsored by the Municipal Council of Faro and the Millennium BCP Foundation, is intended to annually honor a work of poetry, in Portuguese, published in full and in the first edition.
Established in 2023, the Grande Prémio de Poesia António Ramos Rosa, in its first edition held last year, distinguished the poet João Luís Barreto Guimarães.
