Pedro da Silveira
Pedro Laureano Mendonça da Silveira was born on September 5, 1922, in Fajã Grande, municipality of Lajes, Flores island.
His journey began in his hometown, where his exceptional intellect was evident during his primary schooling. This promising start led him to the Angra do Heroísmo Seminary for a year and then to complete his high school studies in Ponta Delgada in 1942, where he first dipped his toes into the literary world.
At that time, the Azorean press was rekindling the controversy surrounding the characteristics of Azorean literature, in which he intervened as a markedly and deliberately insular poet.
In 1951, he settled permanently in Lisbon to have a professional life compatible with the cultural environnment he desired and to broaden his literary knowledge to wider and more selective areas.
Initially, he was a medical delegate, advertising certain pharmaceutical products. He then joined the National Library, where he found a vast field to increase his culture. At the same time, he continued to dedicate himself to various literary activities as a critic, translator, writer, and masterful poet.
He published several significant works, including A Ilha e o Mundo (Lisbon, 1952); José Leite de Vasconcelos nas Ilhas de Baixo (Lisboa, 1959); Sinais de Oeste (Coimbra, 1961); Antologia de Poesia Açoriana do Século XVIII a 1975 (Lisbon, 1977); Corografia (1985), among many others, including his tireless collaboration with newspapers and cultural journals.
The Azorean Cultural Institute has published his poetry and prose in various collections.
About Pedro da Silveira, in his work Antologia Poética dos Açores (Poetic Anthology of the Azores), which includes some of his poems, the Micaelense writer Ruy Galvão de Carvalho writes the following: “Essayst, literary critic, researcher, scholar, poet, short story writer, journalist and translator… he distinguished himself by giving his poetry a sense of Azoreanity and expressing the plight of the islander”.
ISBN: 9789897355318
