Ana Paula Tavares, Winner of the 2025 Camões Prize. - “[This prize is a recognition] of my identity as an African woman […]”

Writer, poet, historian and anthropologist Ana Paula Tavares is the recipient of the prestigious Camões Prize 2025, the ultimate literary award in the Portuguese language. With a career marked by the exploration of identity, memory and the female condition in her country, Angola, and on the African continent, Ana Paula Tavares positions her voice as a bridge between Angola, Africa and the Portuguese-speaking world. In an interview with Villas&Golfe, she also reveals the woman behind the verses.

The Camões Prize is the most prestigious accolade in the Portuguese language. What does receiving this distinction mean to you? 
It brings me great joy. A reminder of my commitment to the written word. The possibility of poetry.

Your work is a journey through memory, land and body. Do you feel that this prize is also a recognition of your identity, that of an African woman? 
Yes. Of my identity as an African woman and a tribute to all the voices that have given substance to the challenge of poetry.

Angola inhabits your poems like a breath. What kind of Angola lives within you? 
The land of my birth, the learning of a way of speaking that I would not have had if I had been born elsewhere.

Over the course of five decades, the country has undergone radical change. What is your view today of the path taken by independent Angola? 
One of deep sadness. I believed that starting over, an absolute necessity, would provide an opportunity for those who had no voice during colonial times, an end to injustice, education for all, and the care that citizenship required. I celebrate the date and mourn the days and nights of the people who are hungry, sick, and whose children are not enrolled in school. I know the women who fight and do not give up. I stand with them in resistance.

At many times, words have defined the first territory of freedom. What role does literature, and especially poetry, play in affirming your identity? 
Discovering in the words of others that Angola could be described differently from how it was portrayed in school books was a rite of passage that has left a lasting mark on my entire journey. Literature came before the war and forced us to take sides, to choose a side, to look to the future head-on, allowing national consciousness to take shape in the existence of our own bodies and lives.

«I celebrate [the 50 years of Angola’s independence] and mourn the days and nights of the people who are hungry, sick, and whose children are not enrolled in school.»

How did your love of writing, and particularly poetry, come about? 
I have loved writing ever since I learned to read and write. My love of reading was instilled in me by the first stories in the Formiga collection, little books that we could buy and that helped us to hatch our first dreams. From reading to writing was a short leap: short plays to be performed in the street, compositions to impress my teachers, the silence of writing as a means of survival. Poetry came later, as an attempt to master, through verse, the whole world around me that was being sung about and whose key to deciphering I did not possess.

The Camões Prize jury spoke of the ‘redemption of poetry’s dignity’ in your work. What does the dignity of poetry mean to you? 
Poetry and dignity are synonymous. It was through poetry and music that ancient peoples left us their vision of the world. The history of humanity before writing owes its survival from oblivion to the precision of poetry, and it is still a source of delight and celebration today.

The creative process is often a secret place. How is a poem conceived within you? 
On the street, in cafés, in the middle of the night, in the jolt of surprise. That’s where it’s conceived. Then it’s put away for a long time until the final poem comes together.

There is always a presence of the sacred, the feminine and nature in your writing. Are these spiritual dimensions? 
It is, if you want an interpretation of the sacred, a visit to the sacred through heretical eyes and impure hands. There are mysteries that I will carry forever without being able to unravel them, others present themselves to me as an offering. Then it’s just a matter of weaving them together.

«Discovering in the words of others that Angola could be described differently from how it was portrayed in school books was a rite of passage that has left a lasting mark on my entire journey.»

Literature is also a heritage. What legacy would you like to leave to younger generations?
A commitment to reading, the pleasure of poetry and the idea that nothing is guaranteed. It is important to continue to fight for truth and justice.

Poetry is often a form of resistance and love. What would you like readers to feel when they see your name in the pages of the history of the Portuguese language? 
If I have readers, I’m already happy. I can’t guide them in how they should feel. Every reading is always something new.

Fifty years after independence, what kind of Angola do you imagine for the next fifty years? 
Imagine, I cannot imagine. Wish for, I would wish for a fairer Angola, especially for children and women.

If you could write a poem for Angola at this symbolic moment, what would be your first verse? 
Long live Angola!

You currently live in Lisbon, but you carry Angola in your soul. How do you feel about being between these two places? 
I live here with the weight of my homeland. I am from that place and in my writing, I always speak from there.

Portugal and Angola share a language, but also wounds and affections. Do you feel that literature has helped to heal and rethink this historical relationship? 
Literature helped kick off all the liberation processes between the two places. They needed to read each other. It was important for books (in any format) to circulate between the new regions, and for knowledge of history (on both sides) to conform to a decolonised and free mindset. That has yet to happen.

Lisbon is now a city of many Africas. What vibe can you feel in the Lisbon you inhabit?
Of many Africas and other parts of the world. We must understand the narratives, preserve the memories and extinguish the old fires that prevent new interpretations of the past.

If you had to define poetry in three words, which would you choose and why? 
Work, reading, conciseness.

What is the poem of your life? 
Song of Solomon, Song of Songs 5:10-16. An excerpt: I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.

«I live here with the weight of the earth. I am from that place, and when I write, it is always from there that I speak.»

 

Text: Carla Martins
Photos: Ozias Filho