Five Coimbra Poets

Five Coimbra Poets brings together different poetical voices from diverse centuries, starting in late medieval Portugal with Dom Dinis and ending with Fernando Assis Pacheco in the last half of the 20th century. All the poets included in this selection were either born or lived in Coimbra. All of them were touched to some degree, explicitly or not, by the city, by the surrounding countryside and the region. Dom Dinis and Sá de Miranda are joined by the two 19th century poets, Antero de Quental and Camilo Pessanha, both of whom played crucial roles in the city’s literary life and its evolution towards 20th century modernism. Finally, Fernando Assis Pacheco’s intense and moving poems range from Coimbra and its environs to Africa and the Portuguese Colonial Wars, and finally to post-revolutionary Portugal.

This bilingual anthology is edited by Luís Quintais, translated by Martin Earl, and illustrated by Alya Kuznetsova.