Each day, a page. Each page, a moon. Each moon, Álamo.

“If you read me, you will remember me.”

Álamo Oliveira has left us. He went beyond words. All those he left us—and there were many!—are how we will remember him. He knew this when he uttered the phrase that immediately came to mind as a title after watching the RTP documentary “Azores” about his life, following his death. A true piece of public service that unites so many voices around one: that of the artist seemingly recast in his Raminho, but widely available to embrace the world.

Álamo Oliveira has left us. A man of the people and of great intellectual elasticity. One of the founders of Teatro Alpendre. The great idiot behind the Gaivota Collection. The writer with rhythm, humor, and truth. Theater was his restlessness, an act of social intervention; poetry, his wide-open intimacy. Hilarious and affectionate, as can be seen in the hour-and-a-half interview with Nuno Costa Santos – as part of the Arquipélago de Escritores (Archipelago of Writers) – stripped of any prejudice, full of the desire to continue fighting for individual and collective freedom, despite the sigh that precedes “I don’t know what I’m doing here.” But he knew. He knew the power of words all too well.

Álamo Oliveira has left us. A writer from a generation to which we owe the intellectual web that still surrounds us today. We are happy that they exist and that they invite us to sit at the same table, the one they always shared in moments of bitterness, victory, eagerness, and perdition. It is a table that dialogues, telling and retelling stories.

I want to believe that many more are yet to come. It will be proof that we are doing them justice, reaping the seeds of this generation of intellectual Azoreans who, scattered across various territories, are proud not only of their own path, but above all of that of their peers.

Álamo Oliveira has left us. I never gave him the hug he deserved, but I remember the glass of white wine we sipped in Santa Maria, less than a year ago, while he winked at me with his smiling, childlike eyes and we talked about books, inspiration, and the Azores.

Finally, I embrace him. I embrace the “destiny” of his words, transforming them into another of the Moons that his dear friend Diniz Borges was kind enough to think up to make him live on in “verses that never die.” Álamo Oliveira embodies the Azores in their purest form: in their harshness and kindness.

July 18, 2025

Helena Barros resides in Santa Maria Island. She is a writer and a cultural activist.

destiny

what is there more in the world

than cemeteries of verses.

every day they appear

verses and more verses

all dead buried in books.

however, poetry is indescribable contentment

affection with a sense of urgency

a cry fired in the direction of freedom

silence in flight of astonishment.

that is why verses die

whenever someone drowns them on paper.

Translation by Diniz Borges