Künstler 2008 – Portrait einer Stadt: Lissabon

Teresa Balté

Teresa Balté (born 1942, Portugal) studied German, English and Music (piano and organ) in Lisbon, Hamburg and Chicago. She is a writer and translator and teaches translation. Her translations into Portuguese include works by Georg Büchner, Bert Brecht and Erich Fried. She is also a music critic for various Portuguese journals.
Balté's poems derive from her experiences in life, shedding a sober, psychoanalytical light on them. Several of her works have dealt with her life and work together with her deceased husband, the sculptor Hein Semke. She writes love poetry but also poetry with a socially critical undertone. Poems like "Donaueschingen" are a kind of bridge between Germany and Portugal. Her style is sober, original and energetic, with an extraordinary mix of youthfulness and maturity, rounded off with fine humour and light irony.
As well as poetry, Teresa Balté has also published children's books and been involved with painting. Her latest book is the collection of verse "Poesia Quase Toda" (Asa, Porto 2005).

Aldina Duarte

Aldina Duarte (born 1967, Portugal) worked for a newspaper and in radio, acted in a film and was a backing singer for an avant-garde art students' band before she found her vocation as a fado singer. She was raised to the aristocracy of fado when she was invited to sing regularly in the famous "Senhor Vinho" fado bar in Lisbon. She appears there every evening and adheres to the rituals of fado – the black shawl, the black dress, the aura of stillness and the scattered lighting.
Duarte's debut album, "Apenas o Amor", which came out in early 2004, was highly praised in the Portuguese press. Appearances in Spain, France, Morocco, Italy, Belgium, Austria and Holland followed. In Milan she sang in the "Piccolo Teatro" in a play about Fernando Pessoa by the poet Antonio Tabucchi.
Aldina Duarte is currently a researcher for EMI Music Portugal, looking after the archive of Portuguese music.

Pacman

Pacman (alias Carlos Nobre Neves) (born 1975, Angola) is the son of parents from Cape Verde and was born in Angola, emigrating as a child with his family to Portugal.
In 1993 he formed "Da Weasel" with his brother. This hip-hop ensemble became the mouthpiece of a generation with songs in Portuguese dealing with the everyday urban life of Portuguese youth.
"Da Weasel" is the most successful Portuguese-language band, winning awards including the prize as "Best Portuguese  Act" at the MTV Awards in 2004 and 2007.
As the songwriter for "Da Weasel", Pacman has emerged as one of the most brilliant songwriters in the Portuguese music scene. As well as his career as a musician, he has also pursued his interest in Portuguese poetry, recording a version of "Trova do vento que passa" a poem by the resistance fighter, poet and politician Manuel Alegre, whom he supported in his campaign as a presidential candidate in 2006.
Pacman currently writes a regular column for the Sunday magazine "Correio da Manhã".
Zurzeit schreibt Pacman eine regelmäßige Kolumne für das Sonntagsmagazin "Correio da Manhã"

Ana Paula Tavares

Ana Paula Tavares (born 1952, Angola) studied History and worked as a teacher. She has been living in Portugal since the late 1970s, gaining a doctorate there in African History.
She is involved in several environmental organisations in São Paolo and New York, is a member of the Angolan Writers' Association and the Angolan section of UNESCO. She currently works as a historian in Lisbon.
Tavares' poems deal with Angolan tradition and languages. love and war, and especially with the role of women in African society. Tavares uses a conspicuously unsentimental language, which impresses with its precision and unexpected leaps of thought.
Her work is influenced by the works of the Angolan poets David Mestre, Arlindo Barbeitos and Rui Duarte de Carvalho, and the Brazilian poets Bandeira and Drummond. Tavares' prizes include the Premio Mario Antonio, the most important prize for Portuguese-language writers from Africa.

Paulo Teixeira

Paulo Teixeira (born 1962, Mozambique) is one of the most important Portuguese poets of the generation that emerged in the Eighties and became established in the Nineties. In a frequently elegiac form, these poets evoke the 'Decline of the West' and regard European civilisation as one which is marked mainly by war and destruction. Teixeira's poetry, too, takes this critical view of our age and Europe, combined with a look back at its literary and cultural tradition.
Teixeira's collection "Inventário e Despedida“ (Inventory and Departure) won three literary prizes, the Poetry Prize of the Portuguses PEN Club, the Eça de Queirós of the City of Lisbon and the big Inapa Prize. Translations of his poems are in anthologies and magazines in eleven languages.