Writer in Residence: Ruy Duarte de Carvalho
Writer in Residence – Spring 2008
April 7th - May 3rd
Ruy Duarte de Carvalho
Sponsor: Portuguese Studies Program
Co-sponsors: Spanish and Portuguese Department and Instituto Camões
Ruy Duarte de Carvalho was born in Santarém, Portugal, in 1941. He grew up in the south of Angola, where he accompanied his father – adventurer and elephant hunter – on trips through the Namibian desert. He later studied cinematography in London and anthropology at the École des Hautes Études (Sciences Sociales) in Paris. Having returned to Angola, he worked as a sheep farmer and studied traditional oral poetry in various African languages. He also devoted himself to studying, photographing and filming the desert peoples of his country and their traditions. At present he is a professor at the University of Luanda. He is also active as an anthropologist, prose writer, filmmaker, photographer, researcher and painter, but is best known as a poet. He is considered not only to be Angola’s most prestigious poet but also one of the most important poets of the Portuguese language area, on a par with, for example, the Brazilian Ferreira Gullar or the Portuguese Nuno Júdice – both old acquaintances of Poetry.
August Willemsen (Translated by Martin Earl)
Some Publications:
Chão de oferta (1972); Decisão de idade (1976); Exercícios de crueldade (1978); Sinais misteriosos… Já se vê…(1979); Ondula, savana branca (1982); Lavra paralela (1987); Hábito da terra (1988); Memória de tanta guerra (1992, anthology); Ordem de esquecimento (1997); Observação Directa (2000); Actas da Maianga (2003); Vou lá Visitar Pastores (1999); Os papéis do Inglês (2000); as paisagens propícias (2005).
A rare multiplicity of texts is intertwined in Ruy Duarte de Carvalho’s work, in each one of his books. Hence, this fiction author - who is also ethnographer, anthropologist, and essayist – brings the cinematographic and photographic imagination to his work: as an ethnographer, the auto-reflexivity of an essayist is mingled with the analysis and the description’s accuracy; as a photographer or as a film director, it is also present the density of the written text, and the agronomist’s attention to the geographical and human landscapes; also, in his whole work, the poet is always present, in an incessant quest “ for the adaptation of the word to the experience’s condition”, exploring deliberately “the semantic flesh of the words”.
A new book by Ruy Duarte de Carvalho was just released (Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisboa, February 2008), focusing on cinema and on its connexions to literature and to anthropology.
José António B. Fernandes Dias (adapt.)
Events in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese
(Open to all interested)
April
- 10th - 12:00 to 1:00 Spanish & Portuguese Library + followed by refreshments
- 14th - 2:00 to 3:00 125 Dwinelle
- 17th - 4:00 to 6:00 Spanish & Portuguese Department - Conference Room - Dwinelle Hall
- 22nd - 9:30 to 11:00 101 Wheeler
Professor Ruy Duarte de Carvalho will have an office in the Spanish and Portuguese Department. Please check his office hours in Dwinelle 5219.
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