Adélia Prado

Adélia Prado is a Brazilian poet and prose writer born in 1935 in Divinópolis, Minas Gerais. She is one of the most beloved and celebrated poets in Brazilian literature, known for poetry that combines the deeply personal — the experiences of a Catholic woman, wife, and mother in provincial Brazil — with a profound theological and mystical dimension. She began publishing in her forties and was immediately recognized as a major poet. Prado's debut collection Bagagem (Baggage, 1976) was celebrated as a revelation. Her subsequent collections include O Coração Disparado (1978), Terra de Santa Cruz (1981), A Faca no Peito (1988), and Oráculos de Maio (1999). Her prose works include the autobiographical book Cacos para um Vitral (1980) and the semi-autobiographical fiction Solte os Cachorros (1979). Her poetry is known for its celebration of the physical and spiritual dimensions of ordinary female life, its frank sensuality, and its capacity to find the sacred in the domestic. Carlos Drummond de Andrade, the greatest Brazilian poet of the twentieth century, immediately recognized her genius on the publication of Bagagem. She received the Prémio Camões in 2024. Prado is regarded as one of the great living poets in any language, and her work has been widely translated internationally.