Conceição Lima,

Conceição Lima, 

Maria da Conceição de Deus Lima (Santana, December 8, 1961), also known as Conceição Lima, is a Santomean poet from the town of Santana in São Tomé, one of two islands in the small nation of São Tomé and Príncipe situated in the Gulf of Guinea, off the western coast of Africa. She studied journalism in Portugal and worked in radio, television and in the print press in her native country. In 1993, Conceição Lima founded the weekly independent publication O País Hoje (The Country Today) which she directed and wrote for during its circulation. She received a degree in Afro-Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from King's College in London. Lima resides in London where she works as a journalist and producer for theBBC Portuguese Language Services. Her poetry has been published in newspapers, magazines, and anthologies in several countries. O Útero da Casa was her first book of poetry and was published in 2004 in Lisbon by the Portuguese publishing house Caminho. Her second book (also poetry), A Dolorosa Raiz do Micondó, was released in 2006 by the same publisher.

Lima is a post colonial writer, one of the few poets who came of age after the independence of her country in 1975. She started writing poems as a teenager and, in 1979, at the age of nineteen, traveled to Angola where she participated in the Sixth Conference of Afro-Asian Writers. She recited some of her poems and was probably one of the youngest participants present. Conceição Lima considers this to be the first phase of her career as a poet. The second phase of her career started with the publication of her poems in newspapers, magazines and anthologies.

In 2009, Conceição Lima traveled to Póvoa de Varzim (Portugal) and visited the Colégio de Amorim where she shared with students stories of her childhood and memories of family members who influenced her the most. She remembered her father and confessed that he was the one who taught her the power of words. When she was a child, her dad would compose music for her mother when she was mad at him. As a child, Conceição soon realized that words have the power to bring peace because her mom would make amends with him. However, she also realized that words can hurt; after all, it was her father's words that had caused her mom to be upset in the first place. Lima also revealed that her father always knew she would be a poet because of her very vivid and creative imagination.

Her publications

·         O Útero da Casa (2004)

·         A Dolorosa Raiz do Micondó (2006)

Some of her poems

Cataclysm and Songs

Happy what's left of me after I'm gone
If only one of the songs sung
Lives beyond the person singing in me now.
Yet I would not save from the slaughter
A single one of the songs I sang and sing.

Instead from the entrails of oblivion
I would steal the laughter of children
And the age of the proverb.

And so to those who come
I would offer intact the enigma of light

Three Contemporary Truths

I believe in the invisible
I believe in the levitation of witches
I believe in vampires
Because they are

Travellers

They bore sunsets and roads
Thirst for the horizon called them

- Who do you belong to?
Who are your people?

That's how our grandmother held out
A mug of water to the traveller