Irene Gil

Poet, short story writer, and translator. Daughter of a military officer who pursued an overseas administrative career, she traveled with him as a child and adolescent through the colonies of Timor, Angola, and Mozambique, eventually settling in the latter, where she had already completed her high school studies. After settling in Lourenço Marques, today Maputo, she began an almost permanent collaboration with the daily newspaper Notícias, directing a page dedicated to women, contributing chronicles, or, during the long period when that newspaper published an unpublished poem by local authors on its front page almost daily, appearing periodically with her own. As a permanent professional occupation, she was a translator for the subtitling of English and French language films for the largest local distributor and exhibitor. She returned to Portugal in 1974, where she still worked in literary translation for a Lisbon publisher, later dedicating herself to writing a memoir published in 1988. She published poetry in Itinerário (1943), in A Voz de Moçambique (1964-1965), and in the magazine Capricórnio (1958), all from Lourenço Marques, and in the magazine O Mundo Português (1943), from Lisbon; she collaborated in the Boletim da Sociedade de Estudos de Moçambique, with works of female colonial interest. Her poetry, with lyrical pretensions occasionally achieved, rarely reflects her long African presence. She is represented in the anthology Poetas Moçambicanos, by Luís Polanah (Casa dos Estudantes do Império, 1960). All her poetry is scattered across periodical publications or remains unpublished.