Rosa Varela

Poet and prose writer. A teacher in official primary education, she completed the teacher training course at the Escola Normal de Braga in 1904. She taught in several schools in Alto Minho, eventually settling at the school in Loivo, Vila Nova de Cerveira. She made her literary debut in 1913 with a book of prose and verse dedicated to her home region, embarking in poetry on an Ultra-Romanticism of weak resources, from which she would later transition to verses to be read before bride and groom at wealthy weddings or during the reception in her hometown of the image of Our Lady of Fátima, or of a minister of Salazar—Virgin and dictator to whom she dedicated several poems. All within a Catholic and rural nationalism of poor verse. She contributed to the newspapers Correio Literário, from Lisbon, Comércio do Lima, from Ponte do Lima, Voz de Cerveira, and Ecos de Cerveira. In 1917, Nuno Catarino Cardoso, who included her in the anthology Poetisas Portuguesas, announced a book of verse by her that seems never to have been published – Revoada – and mentioned that she was working on a novel – Flor das Campas. In 1963, however, the author herself compiled her bibliography as follows: Ondas do Minho, prose and verse, 1913; Harpa da Tumba, prose and verse, 1915; no Instituto Histórico do Minho, prose and verse, 1920; Crónicas e Agradecimentos, prose, 1921; Bando Disperso, poems, 1963, and a novel in preparation, perhaps the same one from 1917, reworked under a different title.