Published 2007. Paperback, 106pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £12.95 / $20 ISBN 9781905700264 [
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Pessoa wrote a large number of poems in English, some of them in the guise of early heteronyms (such as Alexander Search and C R Anon) which prove to be fascinating precursors of the later, modernist work in Portuguese. While not the equal of the masterly Caeiro, Campos, Reis or Pessoa-himself, these poems deserve to be better known and at least available in the English-speaking world. Pessoa was educated in English in Durban, as the stepson of a Portuguese diplomat, and was completely bilingual. He translated several books from English for Portuguese publishing houses. The sometimes startlingly frank content of the earlier English poems — published privately in Lisbon — may well have prevented their wider dissemination in more prudish British circles. What is not so well-known is that Pessoa continued to write poetry in a bookish form of English throughout his life and this volume is an attempt to show the nature of that work to its originally intended audience — an anglophone readership.
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