Scott Edward Anderson's Poetry Blog

After my Portuguese grandfather passed away in September 1993, I was at a loss to uncover our family’s history, which he had been reluctant to share. Hearing Júdice and Tamen read their poems in Portuguese the following December was a revelation of sorts—here were real, live Portuguese poets speaking the language of my ancestors.

The dearth of first-hand accounts and available source materials kept me from learning my family’s Portuguese Azorean history for many years and, frankly, life got in the way of digging deeper. When my father died in 2016, I realized that all my family’s histories were available to me, except one part—the Portuguese. By then, Ancestry.com had made many research materials available online for the first time, and a group of Azorean Genealogists gathered on a listserv to share information, leads, and help translate documents from the Azores, much of which had also become available online in the form of scanned records from the parish archives from the Azores. Suddenly, my research got easier.

In 2018, I made my first trip to the Azores and Portugal, and before going, I reached out to Nuno Júdice, whose contact information I had kept from that poetry reading decades ago.

To my surprise, Nuno remembered me, and we arranged to meet during my visit to Lisbon in July of that year. We spent a delightful evening together, with Nuno sharing insights into Portuguese poetry, history, and culture. Our connection deepened further when he invited me to write a foreword for David Swartz’s English translation of his novella, The Religious Mantle, and later, he published several of my poems in a literary journal he edited.

In 2020, Nuno graciously provided a blurb for my book Azorean Suite/Suite Açoriana, celebrating the work as a poetic exploration of ancestral memory and the experiences of Portuguese emigrants.

Our paths continued to intertwine as the translator Margarida Vale de Gato, whom Nuno had earlier recommended for my poems, agreed to translate my book Dwelling: an ecopoem into Portuguese. Nuno even agreed to help launch the translated edition, Habitar: um ecopoema, in Lisbon in September 2022. In many ways, this felt like coming full circle from our initial encounter at that poetry reading nearly three decades ago.

In a serendipitous twist, Júdice revealed that he had met one of my teachers, the renowned poet Gary Snyder, whom Margarida had also translated, in Madrid in the 1980s. He even shared a draft of a poem he had written about that encounter, further solidifying the interconnectedness of our poetic journeys. When Nuno Júdice passed away last month unexpectedly, I was deeply sad to hear the news from David Swartz; I had just been thinking about Nuno and had planned to write to him. He would have turned 75 years old later this month.

Here is Nuno Júdice’s poem, “Madrid, Anos 80” and my translation from the Portuguese:

MADRID, ANOS 80

Cruzei-me uma vez com Gary Snyder nas Bellas Artes

de Madrid. Eu vinha com livros espanhóis – poesia, e algum

Borges, onde há sempre coisas novas – e cruzei-me com Gary

Snyder, que vinha de ler poemas, mas quando o soube já

a leitura tinha acabado. Também não sei se o iria ouvir: não é

todos os dias que se está em Madrid, com tempo para ir

às livrarias e espreitar museus; e ouvir Gary Snyder pode

não dar jeito ou, pelo menos, obrigar a que se perca alguma coisa

que tão cedo não se voltará a ver. Foi assim que, antes de ir à livraria,

eu tinha passado pelo Caspar David Friedrich, no Prado,

perseguindo montanhas e ruínas da velha Alemanha. Ao sair dali,

com os olhos enevoados pelo mar do Norte, como iria

entrar numa sala para ouvir Gary Snyder? Da próxima vez

que estiver em Madrid, porém, não vai ser assim: e se me cruzar,

nas Bellas Artes, com um poeta que acabe de ler poemas,

mesmo que eu venha da livraria, e tenha passado pelo Prado,

vou arranjar tempo para o ouvir – em homenagem a

Gary Snyder, que não tive tempo

para ouvir.

Nuno Júdice, 26-11-2000

__

MADRID, 80’s

I crossed paths with Gary Snyder once, at Bellas Artes

in Madrid. I was carrying Spanish books – poetry, and some

Borges, where there are always new things – and I bumped into Gary

Snyder, who came to read poems, but by the time I found out

the reading was over. I didn’t know if I would listen to him either: it isn’t

every day that you’re in Madrid, with time to go

to bookstores and look around museums; and listening to Gary Snyder might

not be useful or, at least, make you miss something

that you won’t see again anytime soon. So, before going to the bookstore,

I had passed by Caspar David Friedrich, in the Prado,

chasing mountains and ruins of old Germany. As I left,

with eyes clouded by the North Sea, how was I going to

walk into a room to listen to Gary Snyder? The next time

when I’m in Madrid, however, it won’t be like that: and if you bump into me,

in Bellas Artes, with a poet who has just finished reading poems,

even if I’m coming from the bookstore, and have just passed through the Prado,

I will make time to listen – in honor of

Gary Snyder, who I didn’t have time

to hear.

Translated from the Portuguese by Scott Edward Anderson