Cavalo Pavão (Peacock Horse) 1998
Oil Painting by Maria Cristina Gama de Figeiredo
Photo Credit: CristinaGamaEscritora Blogspot

My Poetry Corner November 2016 features a poem on gratitude by Brazilian poet, painter, and philosopher Maria Cristina Gama de Figueiredo (1964-2010), born in Aracaju, the capital of Sergipe in Northeast Brazil.

Very little about the life of the poet is available online. She died at the relatively young age of forty-six years. Newspaper articles about her passing don’t state the cause of death. Her producer for more than twelve years defined her “as a restless soul who managed to transform her pain into art.” Was her pain emotional, physical, or both? I don’t know.

The journalist and historian Luiz Antonio Barreto (Sergipe/Brazil, 1944-2012) noted that Maria Cristina Gama always stood out for her irreverent and strong personality revealed in her writings, by thinking of poetry “with reflection that goes beyond language to become an instrument that art brings to the cultural dialogue of peoples.”

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