Being a father can be both a challenging and rewarding part of life, shaped by their own experiences and parents. This Father’s Day (June 16 2024), check out 20 Canadian…
Nuno Júdice, The Cartography of Being, translated by Paulo da Costa (Victoria: Livros Pé D’Orelha, 2012). Paperbound, 126 pp., $17.95. Poetry Review by David Swartz Nuno Júdice’s…
Check out one of my audio poems in www.thismighthelp.ca ! For National Poetry Month enjoy these free short audio poems on the theme of resilience. There are poems by former…
“A haunting memoir about the perils and promise of returning home and the joy of leaving it forever changed.”—Foreword Reviews
“Serves as a contemplative accounting of the ones we hold dear and the invisible threads that connect past and future.”—Literary Review of Canada
“One man’s work to change the meaning of father—for himself, his son, and us.” — Richard Harrison, author of On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood
“Intimate and lyrical.” —Anthony De Sa, author of Children of the Moon
“A luminous meditation on Portugal, family, childhood, and time: both evocative and wise.” —Mark Abley, author of Strange Bewildering Time
“Trust the Bluer Skies is a transcendentally, stunning meditation on parenthood, community, and place. Crackling with wisdom and honesty, da costa reminds us that better is possible if we’re only willing to imagine, if we’re only willing to try. Deeply observed, evocative, brave and full of promise. Memoir at its best.” —Ali Bryan, author of Coq
“A portrait of the intimate bond between a father and his young son. paulo da costa guides his four-year old and us, through Vale de Cambra, Portugal, revealing his strong ties to family, his heritage and culture, and the landscape of his youth. He steers us to what he values in life now, eschewing the trappings of mainstream culture in favour of a less consumptive, peaceful existence. Engaging, inspiring, and always tender, this is a memoir to savour slowly.” — Esmeralda Cabral, How to Clean a Fish: And Other Adventures in Portugal
“His work makes us see, feel, and be more: to have profound insights into our lives and the world; to understand what makes us live the way we do and realize that perhaps we ought to be living another way to fulfill our humanity.” —Canadian Writers Abroad
The Midwife of Torment & Other Stories
Paperback: 220 pages
Publisher: Guernica Editions; 1 edition (2017)
ISBN-10: 1771831626
ISBN-13: 978-1771831628
The Midwife of Torment & Other Stories is a collection of sudden fiction (less than 1,000 words each) that compresses its narrative to deliver a variety of stories that alternate the flavour of a philosophical reflection with the whimsical enchantment of a fable with a twist. The characters emerge from worlds of human domesticity and community interaction as well as from the natural world, lending voice to experiences that, at times, occur outside the accepted norms of consensual reality.
“In any skin purple is a heavy tone that penetrates to the core.”
paulo da costa’s stories get under your skin, bruise your consciousness with their exploration of the forces that hold us together, not always benignly, and those that pull us apart. A hunter and a cougar ponder the positions of predator and prey under the dense canopy of a West Coast forest. A nine-year-old girl tells her stuffed rabbit, Carrot, that it’s not as easy to run away as she thought, especially when she suspects someone is following her. Like the bubbles that the character in the title story blows while witnessing the dissolution of a love affair, these stories dazzle and beguile with their craft, their often dark humour, their grasp of people living the extremity that is daily life.
The Scent of a Lie is a book of fourteen inter-connected stories, set in two charismatic towns in Portugal. Characters weave in and out of the intertwined stories, which can be read as a novel in fragments.
This bilingual anthology of fifty one poems selected from Júdice’s extensive poetic opus covers the years of 1967 to 2005 and contains the original Portuguese poems face à face with their English translations. Although his works have been translated into twelve languages in twenty countries, Júdice’s poetry is underrepresented in the English language. At present, this anthology stands as the only book of his poetry available in the English language.
The extended, contemplative tone in many of Júdice’s poems, his unhurried meditation on the subject at hand will appeal to the reader who seeks refuge from the present day diet of fast-food culture.
Judice’s poetry is a welcome counterpoint to the hurried existence of our modern lives. In this collection of bilingual poems the reader will find words that slowly melt into the page as though he or she contemplated an unhurried winter icicle melt from the eaves or the heavens, departing one form to embody another, before dropping into the reader’s mind to moisten a new consciousness and renewed understanding of being.
Pé D’Orelha (2012) Amazon Language: English/ Portuguese
O Perfume da Mentira é um livro de catorze contos interligados que se desenrolam em duas aldeias carismáticas de Portugal e podendo mesmo ser lido como um romance em retalhos.
Da reinterpretação mitológica patente no poema “édipo antes de édipo?” ao poema de pendor autobiográfico “gelo canadiano”, das paisagens intimistas de “tão longe, tão perto” à crítica de costumes de “peregrinação”, da composição quase cinematográfica da sequência dos três poemas que compõem “lua rainbow” à brevidade sentenciosa e auto-reflexiva de poemas como “primeira impressão”, o universo poético de paulo da costa parece deslocar-se permanentemente por entre um sem número de impressões onde poderemos ver, se assim o entendermos e soubermos, um igual sem número de notas de rodapé em relação a esse grande e indecifrável texto que é a vida.
Hi paulo
I thoroughly enjoyed your flash fiction presentation. Very interesting the differences between Canadian and U.S. and European pubs regarding flash fiction. Can you send the pdf?
I love Latin American writers. My new fav is Selva Almada.
One Comment
Elizabeth Jane Haynes
Hi paulo
I thoroughly enjoyed your flash fiction presentation. Very interesting the differences between Canadian and U.S. and European pubs regarding flash fiction. Can you send the pdf?
I love Latin American writers. My new fav is Selva Almada.
Best
Elizabeth