Who:  

Akihiko Shimizu teaches Japanese at the University of Edinburgh. He also does research on Ben Jonson and early modern English literature. Years ago when Aki bumped into a three-line epigram by Jonson, he found it so baffling that he decided to find out what on earth the poem is on about. He ended up writing a PhD thesis, Ben Jonson and Character. Read here. 

Alda Rodrigues is a translator and proof-reader; she has also worked in publishing and lexicography. She co-authors Cinéfilo Preguiçoso. Her relationship with poetry is informal and carefree. Read here.

Alice Geirinhas's body of work relates drawing and narrative, it has been presented in different formats, such as drawings, artist's books, video, installation and performance. The illustration part of the covers shown in this site has her signature.

Alex Wong is a Research Fellow in English Literature at St John's College, Cambridge. His poems are published in the UK by Carcanet Press. Read here.

Ana Maria Pereirinha has worked for the past 20 years as an editor of Portuguese contemporary fiction. She also works as a translator, and is a PhD student at the Program in Literary Theory (Faculty of Letras, University of Lisbon). Her relation with poetry began in kindergarten as a very successful slammer avant-la-lettre,  rhyming chocolate with marmalade. Read here.

Christina Chalmers is a poet and translator, from Edinburgh, Scotland. She has published two poetry chapbooks: Work Songs (Shit valley, 2013) and Willingness (Materials, 2016). She is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at New York University, where she is pursuing research on documentary film and poetry.  Read here.

Elisabete Marques completed her PhD at the University of Lisbon with a dissertation on Maurice Blanchot and Samuel Beckett. Presently she develops her scientific research  at the Margarida Losa Institute for Comparative Literature. She published her first poetry book, Cisco (Mariposa Azual) in 2014 and her second publication, Animais de sangue frio (Língua Morta), was out this year. Click here.

Gustavo Rubim enjoys the rare poets who are also opium-eaters. He is a compulsive, though rather slow, reader, which is why he became a literature professor (Universidade Nova de Lisboa). He is also a slow writer and seldom do his essays have more than fifteen pages. He photographs Ibises and Black Redstarts, among others. Read here.

Helena Carneiro completed her Master at the Program in Literary Theory (University of Lisbon). She works as a redactor and as an editorial assistant at Imprensa da Universidade de Lisboa. She is also the editor of the arts review’s section of the online magazine Forma de Vida. People in her life have explained poetry to her. And she does enjoy Phillip Larkin, who, in his tombstone, has described himself as a “writer”. Read here. 

Inês Rosa is a PhD student at the Program in Literary Theory (Faculty of Letras, University of Lisbon). Her interest in poetry started with Shakespeare’s sonnets (read by Helen Vendler’s), but it was in Cambridge, while eating cakes and drinking tea, she began to talk and write about poems. Focused mainly on the work by Wordswort, sonets, Smith and Philip Larkin are also part of her topics of interest in poetry. Read here and here.

Isabel D'Avila Winter, a Portuguese-australian writer, reads poems one at a time, and likes the ones that make her say wow! or even eheheh. She hates poems that make her say What?? or what about the maid?, like in one of those French films you don’t know what the hell is going on. Read here.

João Brandão studied Cinema, but has a degree in English and Portuguese studies. He works as translator. 

Joana Dilão is a photographer and a producer at Teatro Cão Solteiro. She started reading poetry when she stopped having time for novels.

Joana Meirim is a professor at the Catholic University of Portugal. When she was 18 or 19 years old, she wrote and published several poems, which she now regrets. She enjoys poems with a sense of humour, a characteristic that in her opinion defines good poetry.

Lorraine Mariner has published two collections with Picador, Furniture (2009) and There Will Be No More Nonsense (2014) and works as a librarian at the National Poetry Library, Southbank Centre, London. She has edited two anthologies for Candlestick Press, Ten Poems About Tea and Ten Poems About Friendship.

Madalena Alfaia studied literature. She has worked as an editor since she left university and at Tinta-da-China for the past ten years. Her collaboration with the choreographer Victor Hugo Pontes and drama started in 2004. She has never felt embarrassed to declare the pleasure she gets from poetry, fact that has left her on occasions in awkward situations.

Maria Rita Furtado is a translator and a PhD student. She knew by hearth a poem about hummingbirds, by reading a book on animals that her sister tore apart (true story, registered on videotape). She never memorized a poem ever since then, but she still likes reading and talking about poetry. She has translated some of the sections published by this site.

Maria Sequeira Mendes is a professor at the Faculty of Letras, University of Lisbon, and collaborates with Teatro Cão Solteiro. She wrote for the first time about poetry at primary school, but the composition had spelling mistakes. It was then she promised she would never write about poets who used difficult words to copy. This has proved to be a difficult oath to live by.

Marta Brito, from Lisbon, has written, writes, and hopes to go on writing on cinema. From poetry she keeps images and times. But has given up writing about it.  

Marisa F. Falcón was born in Galicia, but she has been living in Lisbon for so long that she no longer feels the need to carry an umbrella in her purse. She is finishing her PhD thesis on contemporary theatre, so that she can spend the rest of her life reading detective novels. Her relation with poetry is complicated, but she does know certain lines by heart. 

Marta Cordeiro is an assistant professor at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School, Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon. She used to recite it for fun, and for any kind of reward.

Miguel Cardoso lives in Lisbon. He teaches and translates. He writes in long respiratory problems. At night he reads Albas and Ruy Belo. Poetry helps you to get by until the morning after. He gets out of bed on Tuesdays and Saturdays. He goes to the flea-market.

Rita Faria is a professor at the Catholic University of Portugal. She doesn’t know how to do anything else apart from reading and writing and wants to do nothing else apart from reading and writing. Besides this, she enjoys horror films, vampires, ghosts and zombies in general and thinks the Portuguese language is the most fun in the whole world.

Sara Carvalho has once studied Math but now dedicates her time putting colours onto life and other things such as this website. She knows by heart songs that are poems or poems that are songs. Poetry makes her stand tall like sycamores. 

Sónia Oliveira was born on the ninth day of the ninth month, nineteen seventy two, and translates for a living. She has published the poetry book antenas in 2012 and, both prior and subsequently to that, several poems and short stories in magazines such as Eufeme, Piolho, and DiVersos — Revista de Poesia e Tradução, the online magazines Preguiça, Diversos Afins (Brazil), and Minguante, the anthology of visual poetry poemavisual.com.br, fanzines Milk and Wodka (Switzerland), Debaixo do Bulcão, and Flanzine, and the poetry publication Nem Só de Gin Vive o Pinguim. She runs the blog triplicado.blogspot.com since 2006.

Telmo Rodrigues completed his PhD in Literary Theory at Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon, with a thesis entitled For a Lark: The Poetry of Songs. In his thesis he explores relations between popular music and poetry. Currently he is the director of the magazine Forma de Vida.

Yulia Lukyanova is a social psychologist who is fascinated by all things protest. She is Russian, but has lived in Edinburgh, Scotland for some time now. She completed her PhD dissertation ‘Manufacturing dissent in Russia: A discursive psychological analysis of protesters’ talk’ at the University of Edinburgh in 2016. At this point in her life, she teaches sociology and does research into Russian diaspora in the UK and social movements in Russia.