Paulo
Teixeira

Paulo Teixeira was born in Lorenço Marques, today’s Maputo, Mozambique, in 1962. He is one of the most important poets of his generation. From 2000 to 2006, he taught grammar school children creative writing in the context of a project run by the Portuguese Ministry of Education. Since 1997, he has edited the literary magazine Relãmpago (Flash). Paulo Teixeira represented Portugal at Literaturexpress 2000, a project run by the Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, in which one hundred authors from all European countries travelled by rail across Europe from Lisbon to Moscow and back to Berlin.

His poetry is a critical stock-taking of our times, a poetic cartography of Europe with a constant look back at its literary and cultural tradition. He received the Poetry Prize of the Portuguese PEN-Club, the major Inapa Prize and the Eça de Queirós of the City of Lisbon for the volume Inventário e Despedida (1991; Inventory and Farewell). His poems are critical examinations of modern conditions, drawing continually on an enduring dialogue with Europe’s literary and cultural heritage. These links to history are expressed in a frequent use of Latin and also demonstrated in the titles of his volumes of poetry such as Arte da Memória (1992; The Art of Remembering) or O Rapto de Europa (1993; The Rape of Europe). In these works, Teixeira urgently questions the value of European culture, the possibility of progress – and reveals a pessimistic view of what the future may hold. Elegiac verses express an apocalyptic fear of the end of occidental civilisation. Typical stylistic means of his texts are a frequent use of the subjunctive, the almost obsessive observation of time and temporality, and the use of a lyric “I” that cannot be clearly identified as the author himself. In 1999, he published the volume of poetry Túmulo de Heróis Antigos (The Grave of Ancient Heroes), collecting together 32 poems inspired by the Romantic paintings of Caspar David Friedrich.