Ruy Duarte de Carvalho

Ruy Duarte de Carvalho was born in Santarém, Portugal in 1941. He grew up in the south of Angola, where he accompanied his father – adventurer and elephant hunter – on trips through the Namibian desert. He later studied cinematography in London and anthropology at the École des Hautes Études (Sciences Sociales) in Paris. Having returned to Angola, he worked as a sheep farmer and studied traditional oral poetry in various African languages. He also devoted himself to studying, photographing and filming the desert peoples of his country and their traditions. At present he is a professor at the University of Luanda. He is also active as an anthropologist, prose writer, film maker, photographer, researcher and painter, but is best known as a poet. He is considered not only to be Angola’s most prestigious poet but also one of the most important poets of the Portuguese language area, on a par with, for example, the Brazilian Ferreira Gullar or the Portuguese Nuno Júdice – both old acquaintances of Poetry.