This is the 10th edition of the award and, in addition to the monetary value, Yara Nakahanda Monteiro will receive an original engraving of a portrait of Glória de Sant'Anna by Rui Pais.
Yara Nakahanda Monteiro was born in 1979 in Angola and has lived in Portugal since she was two. In 2018, she published her first novel, "Essa Dama Bate Bué!".
About the work, one of the judges, the Brazilian writer Jane Tutikian, said: "Don't think about stylistic detours, about games of figures of speech, about complexity. , the subjectivity and imagery co-creation of the reader".
"It's like looking for this moving life, in childhood, adolescence, in Portugal or in Angola, in the past, in the present, seeking the constitution of the being, that, yes, in its complexity, forged by the surroundings. There is violence, there are losses , there are transits. There are apparitions, there are ambivalences, there are struggles, prejudices, sexism, racism... There is, above all, a great poet, capable of decreeing 'I am from where I am', from the poem 'Forecast of Time' and, in final poem, when everything apparently ends, everything actually starts with 'Side by side': 'Join us'", he added.
For his part, the Galician literary critic Xosé Manuel Eyré Val, who was also a member of the jury, stated: "I believe that the main theme of the poem is the futility, fragility and evanescence of the perception of life, born of the tension that is established between a very strong introspection and another extrospection also very strong".
The jury for this year's edition was made up of the writer Ana Paula Tavares, the goldsmith Andrea Paes, the writer Jane Tutikian, the literary critic Xosé Manuel Eyré Val and Jacinto Guimarães, from the Cultural Action Group of Válega, which organizes the award in collaboration with the children of the poet Glória de Sant'Anna.
The award ceremony, scheduled for the 28th, "will not take place for reasons still linked to the pandemic", says the organization, referring that "a video recording will be presented on Glória de Sant'Anna's page [on the Internet] works, this year's authors and musicians".
In addition to Yara Nakahanda Monteiro, this year's finalists were André Pinto Teixeira, Alexandre Borges, Daniel Gonçalves, António Canteiro (pseudonym of João Carlos Costa da Cruz), Sérgio Godinho, Bernardo Pinto de Almeida, and Victor Oliveira Mateus.
Last year, the winning work was "Roupão Azul", by Brazilian author Ana Paula Jardim.
The Glória de Sant'Anna Literary Prize is an international poetry award in memory of Glória de Sant'Anna (1925-2013) and was established in 2012 by the Válega Cultural Action Group and the poet's family.
The award aims to reward an author of "the best poetry book" in Portuguese, in the first edition in Portugal or in Portuguese-speaking territories.
