The Porto Book Fair opened this Friday in the gardens of the Palácio de Cristal with an edition centered on poetry, which has as its central figure Ana Luísa Amaral, who died on the 5th of August, aged 66, having also participated , just a week earlier, at the press conference held by the municipality to present the program it had decided to dedicate a long time ago.
With 126 stands, one less than last year, and a return to Feira da Alegria, a space dedicated to craft publishers that the covid-19 pandemic did not allow to be organized in 2021, the fair once again has a strong presence of book sellers, who became one of its trademarks since the Porto City Council took over the organization of the event in 2014 and took it to the Palácio de Cristal.
In the edition in which the motto is “Imagining and Acting”, poetry is highlighted at the Porto Book Fair 2022. “The Book Fair is a literary festival, I would even say a cultural festival. Poetry is the art of sharing, a promise of the future, and we dedicate this edition of the Book Fair to poetry as a transforming force”, said Nuno Faria.
“When we invited Ana Luísa, she accepted with enthusiasm and worked with us in a very active and close way on the programming that concerned her as an honored writer”, told PÚBLICO the artistic director of the City Museum, Nuno Faria, also responsible for the cultural program of the Book Fair, noting that “the very unexpected disappearance” of the writer turns “what would be another episode of her literary life into the first significant public event dedicated to her after her death”.
"Ana Luísa Amaral has deserved wide critical acclaim", added the coordinator of the Book Fair's programming, highlighting the attribution to the author, in 2021, of the Queen Sofia Prize for Ibero-American Poetry. “On the first weekend, the 27th and 28th of August, we will have a tribute to Ana Luísa Amaral, with the unveiling of the tribute tree at 3 pm on the 27th”, he added.
Confessing an “enormous pleasure in honoring my dear friend Ana Luísa Amaral”, the Mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira, recalled that the municipality already honored the author with the city medal, in 2016. linden trees from the gardens of the Palácio de Cristal. It is the city's way of honoring her forever”, he congratulated.
“We resisted two years of the pandemic. This will be a return to our normality, I hope that people can join", underlined Rui Moreira, stressing that this edition will take place without any restriction on capacity: "It is an opportunity for booksellers and secondhand sellers to promote what they are producing. Editing books is an act of heroism. I hope people come.”
In a short speech, attended by members of the council team, Ana Luísa Amaral admitted feeling “honored by this invitation and happy with this distinction”. “I was born in Lisbon, I grew up in Sintra, I came to the north and at first I hated it. But Porto, at this moment, is my city. It is the city that welcomed me, a wonderful city”, he stressed.
Even before finishing reading a poem, Ana Luísa Amaral confessed that she was “very sorry” that Rui Moreira is serving his last term as mayor of Porto. “From the point of view of what interests me most, culture, our president has done a lot. I am not saying this just because this invitation has now happened, it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the Book Fair, for example. Everyone remembers when the Book Fair was at the Boavista roundabout, everything dispersed, anyway”, he recalled.
Ana Luísa Amaral, honored author of this edition – will be part of a lot that includes Vasco Graça Moura (2014), Agustina Bessa Luís (2015), Mário Cláudio (2016), Sophia de Mello Breyner Andersen (2017), José Mário Branco (2018), Eduardo Lourenço (2019), Leonor de Almeida and Maria de Sousa (2020) ) and Júlio Dinis (2021) – will be the object and protagonist of two lessons in the first weekend of the 2022 Book Fair, which Nuno Faria considered “unmissable”.
From the 26th of August to the 11th of September, in the gardens of the Palácio de Cristal, visitors will have 126 pavilions at their disposal, into which the 84 entities entered in this edition will be divided. Book sales are combined with a vast cultural program that, this year, has some new features, such as the Brazilian Poetry Cycle, which symbolically marks the celebration of the bicentennial of Brazil's independence. The cultural program includes 22 Concerts, 11 Conversations, 9 Lessons, 4 Cinema Sessions, 5 Breathed Word Sessions and 46 Children and Youth Activities, activities that branch out to the Palácio de Cristal Gardens, Almeida Garrett Municipal Library, Casa do Roseiral and Extension of the Romanticism.