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Enjoy Cape Verdean Poetry in English and Portougese
Poets of Cape Verde: A Bilingual Selection presents the work of thirty-six poets in both Portuguese and English. The authors’ periods range from the nineteenth century to the present.
Poets of Cape Verde: A Bilingual Selection appeared in 2010. Translated by Frederick G. Williams, the book presents poems in both their original Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole and in English translation. This bilingual format matters. It allows readers to hear the cadences of the original while following the meaning in English, preserving the intimacy of voice that is often lost when poetry crosses languages.
Cape Verde’s identity itself is bilingual. The islands were shaped by centuries of Portuguese rule and West African heritage, and language became one of the clearest mirrors of this mixture—the two languages on the page in the anthology respect that duality. For English readers, the translations are a doorway. For those who understand Portuguese or Creole, the original texts remain intact, echoing with rhythm, idiom, and song.
Information:
“Poets of Cape Verde
– A Bilingual Section”
Translations: Frederick G. Williams
Publisher: Brigham Young University Press
Year: 2010
Pages: 468
Sample poems:
The Roots of Cape Verdean Poetry
Poetry has long been central to Cape Verdean culture. During the break between the 19th and 20th centuries, Eugénio Tavares composed mornas in Creole — songs of longing, separation, and love, often shaped by the harsh reality of drought and emigration. His verses are still sung today and are considered part of the islands’ living heritage.
The literary landscape shifted in 1936 with the founding of Claridade, a journal that launched a cultural awakening. Writers began to portray Cape Verde in a new way. Instead of showing it as a colonial outpost, they pictured it as a community, making literature a form of self-definition. Their poetry often touches subjects such as hunger, exile, and the dignity of islanders’ lives.
Later came figures such as Luís Romano de Madeira Melo, who documented a century of Cape Verdean writing, ensuring the voices of poets would not fade. The anthology by Williams draws directly from this tradition, giving it a new life beyond the islands.
The Translator’s Craft
Frederick G. Williams is known for his work with Lusophone literature, having edited and translated anthologies from Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. His Cape Verde collection sits within this larger project of giving visibility to writers from the Portuguese-speaking world who remain little known in English.
Translation is never straightforward. In poetry, it is especially delicate. Original rhythm, sound, and imagery can rarely remain the same in another language. Williams avoids flattening the poems into plain English. Instead, he’s guiding readers through the vibe and the meaning. The result is a translation that honours the spirit of the original poems without pretending that nothing has been lost.
This bilingual layout also serves scholars and language learners, who can compare versions side by side. More importantly, it preserves a cultural balance: the English text makes the poems accessible to a broader audience. At the same time, the Portuguese and Creole affirm that Cape Verde’s literature stands firmly on its own terms.
A Piece of True Culture
The poems in this book offer something very different from the casual “No stress” motto that greets visitors at Sal’s airport. They reveal a much truer and deeper Cape Verde, where poetry grew out of hardship, migration, and a constant dialogue with the sea. These are verses shaped by longing, memory, and resilience — expressions of an island people scattered across continents yet bound by song.
For students and readers of world literature, the anthology is an entry point into a tradition often overlooked in Europe and North America. Cape Verde’s poets deserve to stand alongside their Brazilian, Mozambican, and Angolan counterparts in the global Lusophone canon.
Williams’s selection does not claim to be exhaustive. Instead, it offers a clear, accessible doorway into a tradition that is both local and universal. In a few dozen poems, it shows how a small archipelago has produced a body of work that speaks of love, exile, identity, and survival in ways that resonate far beyond the shores of the Atlantic.
Bibliography / Sourdes
- Poets of Cape Verde – A Bilingual Section, translated by Frederick G. Williams, Brigham Young University Studies, 2010, ISBN: 9780842527590;
- Poets of Cape Verde – A Bilingual Section on Google Books;
- Poems: Poetry, environment and national identity in Cape Verde – Part 2 and Poetry, environment and national identity in Cape Verde – Part 1, 2013, by prances on Alternative Environmentalism blog;
