- Celebrates sixty years of the poetic work of the superlative contemporary Portuguese poet, Maria Teresa Horta
- Dual language, with facing page translations
- Translated by Lesley Saunders, whose translation of Horta’s “poema” won the Stephen Spender Trust open award for poetry in translation in 2016
- Maria Teresa Horta, one of whose books was banned and deemed an outrage to public morals in the 1970s, is a leading light in Portuguese literature, acclaimed as an author, literary critic, journalist and feminist activist.
- Each poem in the collection was selected by the poet herself together with her life-long companion, Luis Barros
- Includes an introductory essay by Ana Raquel Fernandes, Assistant Professor at the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies
Point of Honour is a landmark anthology of Portuguese poetry, the first of its kind in English. This definitive, dual-language collection comprises translations of 80-plus poems by Maria Teresa Horta, one of the most revered writers of modern Portugal. It provides selections from each of her volumes of poetry published over a writing career that spans six decades.
Maria Teresa Horta’s work is powerful, political, and erotically charged, with an intensity of sensual imagination and an often rapturous use of imagery. For over sixty years she has been an actively subversive writer, defying literary as well as social convention.
The book opens with a critical essay by leading scholar in comparative literature, Ana Raquel Fernandes, which – together with the translations by poet Lesley Saunders – enables an English readership to acquire a sense of the formal, emotional and intellectual power and significance of this poet’s work. The book also serves to underline the importance of sustaining cultural connections between the UK and Europe.
Translated by Lesley Saunders, Maria Teresa Horta, and introduction by Ana Raquel Fernandes. Paperback, 210 x 135 mm, 200 pages, April 2019.
Lesley Saunders writes about how she approached the translation of Maria Teresa Horta’s poems here.