As part of the centennial commemoration, the Cátedra Natália Correia at PBBI-Fresno State is putting forth every single week through FILAMENTOS (arts and letters in the Azorean Diaspora) a poem, article, a brief piece from her memoirs or an excerpt from a play, in translation. Throughout the upcoming year of 2024, we will bring to fruition other events, publications, and research on Natália Correia.

This week, we feature an excerpt from a piece written by Natália on Poetry and Feminism.

Poet. Feminism
“(…) I declare that, no matter how abused the word may be, I demand, with all the strength of the feminine essence that dictates my verses, that I be called a poet, genuinely a poet, viscerally, titanically a poet. And I laugh, or rather, I scowl at the brainless female versifiers who drool with delight when they are magnified with the ironic accolade of “women poets”, the pass that grants them a place in the male sun.
And don’t think I’m talking about myself. I have in mind a world that, due to the stupid de-feminization of women’s furious demands, runs the risk of homogenization. Women are copying men to free themselves at their worst: in macho donjuanism, in the professional delirium of productivity, in the fanatical activism of political fiction, in what separates, not in what unites. Because what unites is the difference. The remarkable difference that generates the love that makes life possible.” (CORREIA, Natália (1971). “Zoom”, Revista Notícia, April 3: 44)

Collection submitted to PBBI-Fresno State by Poet Ângela Almeida.

Translation by Diniz Borges