Biografisk notat

Lesley Saunders is the author of several poetry collections, most recently 'This Thing of Blood & Love' (Two Rivers Press 2022) and, with artist Rebecca Swainston, 'Days of Wonder' (Hippocrates Press 2021), a document of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her English translations – including the poem that won the 2016 Stephen Spender award – of renowned Portuguese poet Maria Teresa Horta were published as 'Point of Honour' (Two Rivers Press 2019). Lesley works on collaborative projects with visual artists, sculptors, musicians, photographers and dancers as well as other poets. Otherwise, she is a visiting professor at UCL Institute of Education, London, and an honorary research fellow at Oxford University Department of Education. Maria Teresa Horta – one of the most revered writers of modern Portugal – was born in 1937 and began writing before the revolution that deposed the brutal Estado Novo regime; her early work was banned for being ‘an outrage to public morals’. One of the Three Marias who in 1971 co-authored the ground-breaking Novas Cartas Portuguesas (New Portuguese Letters), Horta has continued to publish novels, short stories and journalism, although she considers herself a poet above all. Ana Raquel Fernandes, Assistant Professor at the Universidade Europeia and senior lecturer at the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, is an expert in comparative modern literature and has led several research projects in collaboration with colleagues at English universities. In the course of her long-term engagement with Maria Teresa Horta’s work, Fernandes has published several journal articles and book chapters on different aspects of this unique and important writer’s corpus.