FunCulturalAna Luísa Amaral is awarded the Reina Sofía Prize...

Ana Luísa Amaral is awarded the Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry

“An award of enormous prestige made for poetry”, this is how the Portuguese poet Ana Luisa Amaral has defined the XXX Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry, an award that she received today “with immense happiness”, while walking her dog Millie Dickinson.

This is what Amaral (Lisbon, 1956) has expressed to the Efe agency after learning that today she has become the winner of this award granted by National Heritage and the University of Salamanca for “crossing literature with the important things in life, which they are the vindication of justice ”.

“It is an award of enormous prestige, made for poetry. I think it is the most prestigious in Ibero-America because it involves all the countries of Spanish expression and the Portuguese in Portugal “, said the poet, an author who writes because she” needs “it as much as” drinking water “because for her it is” a need”.

A retired professor of Anglo-American literature at the University of Porto, Amaral is an expert on Dickinson, but also passionate about feminist and queer studies. For this reason, this award has surprised her while she is working on a prologue for Virginia Woolf’s A Room of Her Own, as well as on her new book Mundo , which will be released in October.

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Regarding the award, it was the National Heritage of Spain that announced the award this morning, endowed with 42,100 euros and awarded by that institution and the University of Salamanca with the intention of recognizing a poetic work that constitutes a contribution relevant to the common cultural heritage of Latin America and Spain.

In the words of the president of National Heritage, Llanos Castellanos, the jury has chosen Amaral’s work because it contains “a message of openness, respect, tolerance and vindication, also in an Anglo-Saxon key, which he has managed to unite with Portuguese letters the value of the small and the everyday ”.

Castellanos has also described the winner as “an extraordinary woman” and has underlined, citing the author herself, that Amaral has made a motto of her poetry: “all great poetry is ethical”.

For his part, Ricardo Rivero, rector of the University of Salamanca (USAL), has affirmed that the winner “represents and personifies” some of the Iberian and Ibero-American values: the defense of freedom, the dignity of the person and also equity of genre.

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In this sense, Amaral has clarified that he does not write “neither by program, nor to claim anything”, but his professional career has consisted of “crossing literature with the important things in life, which are the vindication of justice”.

“If that claim is based on gender, class, race or ethnicity, and also at this moment that it is turning to the extreme right, then more than ever we have the obligation to do so,” he added, while addressed to the far-right parties with a message: “hatred leads to nothing but hatred.”

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A vindication of justice present in her work along with other issues such as feminism or queer theory. “Feminism – he added – is not only beneficial for women, but also for men (…) Masculinity is a very difficult thing to learn, this idea that men do not cry, is a lie.”

For the second time in a row, due to the pandemic, the members of the jury have cast their votes electronically, although twelve of its members have met in the Royal Palace of Madrid.

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This jury has been co-chaired by the president of National Heritage and the rector of the University of Salamanca and has been composed of Santiago Muñoz Machado, director of the Royal Spanish Academy, or Raúl Zurita, the winner of the last edition.

The recent winner of the XXX Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry also has other awards such as the “Grande Prémio” from the Portuguese Writers Association, in 2008, and the Giuseppe Acerbi Prize from Italy, in 2007.

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