Circe Maya

Circe Maia (Montevideo, June 29, 1932) is a Uruguayan writer, poet, teacher and translator.

Biography

Maia was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1932. Her parents were María Magdalena Rodríguez and the notary public Julio Maia, both from northern Uruguay. It was her father who published her first book of poetry for her, when Circe was 12 years old. (Feathers, 1944). At 19 she suffered the sudden death of her mother, which left a deep mark on her first book of mature poetry, published when she was 26. years (In time, 1958).

She married Ariel Ferreira, a doctor, in 1957, and in 1962 the couple moved to Tacuarembó with their first two daughters.

He studied philosophy at the Institute of Artigas Teachers (IPA) and continued studying philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences of the University of the Republic. He dedicated himself to teaching philosophy at the departmental high school and at the Tacuarembó Teacher Training Institute.

She participated in the founding of the Student Center of the Artigas Teachers Institute (CEIPA) and was an active member of the Socialist Party.

The years of the civil-military dictatorship in Uruguay were hard on his family. One day in 1972, the military broke into her home at 3 in the morning to arrest Circe and Ariel, but she was allowed to stay because her youngest daughter was just 4 days old. Her husband spent two years in prison for being part of the National Liberation Movement-Tupamaros. In 1973, Maia was removed from her position as a secondary school teacher by the military government, but she managed to continue giving private language classes and continue her studies.In 1983 she lost her 18-year-old son. in a traffic accident. This tragedy added to the difficulties of writing under her dictatorship led to a break in her poetic work. With the return of democracy in 1985, she was reinstated in her charge as a secondary school teacher. Her publications began again with Destrucciones (1987), a small book written in prose, and A trip to Salto (1987), a prose story about the imprisonment of her husband

The publication of Surfaces (1990) marked his return to poetry and was followed by other poetry books and their translations into English, Greek and other languages. For the reading public, the most important publication was the compilation of his nine poetry books Circe Maia: poetic work (1700 and 2010), a book of more than 400 pages.

He taught high school philosophy until his retirement in 2001, but continues to teach English literature at a private institute, prepares theater groups in Tacuarembó, as well as writes and translates.

Poetry

In her first adult book, En el tiempo (1958), Maia already pointed out that the proper expression of poetry is «direct, sober, open language, which does not require a change of tone in the conversation, but make it like a conversation with greater warmth, greater intensity... The mission of this language is to discover and not to cover; discover the values, the meanings present in existence and not introduce ourselves into an exclusive and closed poetic world.” Throughout all of her work, she has remained faithful to this poetic art . Objects, people, close deaths, painting and time are some of the themes chosen to "discover" and discover the human plot. The experience itself becomes the possibility of auscultating the human and establishing a dialogue with an always present you.

Throughout fifty years of poetic work, Circe Maia has moved away from hermetic literature that has become a monologue. As she herself says, she sees “in daily, living experience, one of the most authentic sources of poetry.” Her poetry is expressed through sensitivity, especially auditory and visual.

Some of his poems have been set to music by Daniel Viglietti, Jorge Lazaroff, Numa Moraes and Andrés Stagnaro, among others. That her poetry was in keeping with the spirit of the times can be seen in the name of the Uruguayan folk song group Los que Iban Cantando, inspired by a poem from En el tiempo (1958). Perhaps the most significant was her poem Behind my voice which was set to music by Daniel Viglietti in 1978 as Another Voice Sings . This song, which is sometimes performed in combination with the poem Desaparecidos by Mario Benedetti, became a denunciation of the Latin American military regimes that committed forced disappearances.

Books

• Plumitas (1944)
• In time (1958)
• Daily presence (1958)
• The Bridge (1970)
• Maia, Bacelo, Benavides; poetry (1972)
• Changes, permanence (1978)
• Two voices (1981)
• Destruction (poesy in prose, 1986)
• A trip to Salto (prose, 1987)
• Areas (1990)
• Circle of light, circle of shadow (translated to Swedish, 1996)
• From the visible (1998)
• Measured by measure (Shakespeare translation, 1999)
• Breve sun (2001)
• Yesterday an Eucalyptus (Work translated into English, 2001)
• A trip to Salto(English translation, 2004)
• Poetry work(the whole of his poetic work, 2007)
• The Sumerian Dust House: About Readings and Translations (2011)
• The Pearl Heater (2013)
• Poems: Robin Fulton (translation of a Scottish poet, 2013)
• Dualities (2014)
• Transparency (Poetic anthology. Editorial Visor, Spain. 2018)
• Multiple walks to an unknown place: poetic anthology (1958-2014) (Editorial Pre-Textos, Spain. 2018)
• Water voices (Rebeca Linke Editoras. 2020)

Awards

• 2007, Uruguay National Poetry Award.
• 2009, Annual Literature-Poesy Prize, with its book Complete work.
• 2009, Tribute of the National Academy of Letters.
• 2010, Bartolomé Hidalgo Award for Path.
• 2013, Medalla Delmira Agustini.
• 2015, Bartolomé Hidalgo Poetry Award for His Book Dualities.
• 2015, The Great Award for Intellectual Work, MEC.

Discography

• Circe Maia for herself (Sonopoems, SP 704)
• 1996, Final image and other texts (Ayuí / Tacuabé A/E164k)
• 2008, Final image and other texts (republished. Ayuí / Tacuabé A/E164CD)