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Critics on the work of Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão

January 18, 2006
On first reading Fiama, one is confronted by poetry that defies interpretation and, therefore, comes across as distant, thorny and impenetrable. (...) We need to read not only, literally, what is there but also “the actual body of the words of this literality”. Because all these elements are equally valid in that they belong to the indefinable movement of the whole.
Eduardo Prado Coelho“Fiama: o poema como abreviatura total” (Fiama, the poem as total abbreviation), in A Noite do Mundo 1988



Fiama feels the inextricable complexity of the world, and her bewilderment towards it is permanent, though not passive (...). Each one of her poems is an eventful and abrupt journey generated from within the unyielding fragility of a perplexed but defiant identity.

António Ramos Rosa

Letras & Letras, 21 October 1992



For more than thirty years, the poetry of Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão has relentlessly sought to deepen the relationship between language and the world, between words and life, between linguistic images and real images. If poetry is sound and if the work of a poet is her sound, her breath, then poetry breathes through the immensity of a life, drawing within this breath, images of those places it has travelled through.

Gastão Cruz

Letras & Letras, 21 October 1992



Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão seems to radiate a new peace of mind, having shed, like a chrysalis, all the weight of literary tradition. [...] This is someone who, having seemingly freed herself from a past burden, wishes to match sight with touch, capturing the colours and forms of our every day . . .

Fernando Pinto do Amaral

Público - Leituras, 24 June 2000



Living Scenes revolves around a central theme which could be defined as the place of things. Forming a unitary vision that gives order to a poetic universe, imbued with literary experience and reflection, her personal and poetic history is opened up to the resolutely, precisely chosen and crafted word.

Maria Alzira Seixo

JL - Jornal de Letras, Artes e Ideias nº 791, 24 January 2001



Fiama is a great poet, with or without her Poesia 61, inter-textual games, initiating rites or cabalistic codes. Her poetry is characterised by a cosmogonical dimension, which has evolved from an initial abstruseness into a fluent, descriptive register with an analytical bent – the best example: Song of Songs, 1995.

Eduardo Pitta

Ler nº 49, December 2000



What is most outstanding in Fiama’s poetry is her clear, artistic consciousness and the assumption, by the author, of a compromise with language, which is “resolved” by being explored, as we have already said, along with the reality that she is intent on illuminating.

Angel Crespo

Antología de la poesia Portuguesa contemporánea II, 1981
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