A new book of poems offers poems about Brazil in Portuguese, by kids in Dublin

On a recent Saturday afternoon, Aline Polido Moreira and her 1o-year-old daughter sat at a table at the Third Space cafe in Smithfield. 

The window nearby overlooked a wooden cabana, temporarily assembled and adorned with sparkly lights for the Smithfield Christmas market.

Polido Moreira was already in the festive spirit, just back from a Christmas party, and wearing a Santa jumper.

To help digest the “delicious snacks” she’d had at the party, her daughter, Valentina Polido Moreira, took a sip of sparkling water. 

A common Brazilian Christmas favourite, salpicão, was among “her favourite treats”, Valentina said. 

This popular chicken salad is typically made with shredded chicken, a bunch of  fruits, vegetables, and lots and lots of mayo.

As they sat at the table, Aline opened a book, Meu Brasil de Muitos Poemas, which included some of Valentina’s poems.

Along with five other young authors, Valentina had worked over the course of 24 Saturdays to create this book of poems in Portuguese, and the illustrations to go with them.

This project was part of a constellation of efforts by Dubliners with a connection to Brazil to keep their children in touch with that country and its language and culture – from camps, to classes, to parties, and more.  

“You have to pass Portuguese on, right?” says Jaqueline Ercolani, the mother of Isabella Ercolani, another of the authors of Meu Brasil de Muitos Poemas. “The language that you … that your family speaks. It’s a heritage.”

Yes, says Thais Duarte-Power, mother of Cían Duarte-Power, another of the book’s authors. “I think it conveys a lot of who we are, and it conveys our truth, to communicate with their grandparents and understand where we came from.”

The starting point

It all started with AMBI, the association of Brazilian families in Ireland.

It’s a volunteer-run organisation focused on bringing Brazilian culture and the Portuguese language to Brazilians and their children in Ireland, says Aline Polido Moreira. 

Jaqueline Ercolani says that AMBI provides an important network for her and other members with families far away in Brazil. 

“Since most of us don’t have family in Ireland, AMBI is a family – our family – that is able to pass on our culture, our heritage, to my children,” she says.

That Christmas party Moreira was just back from on the Saturday when she was sitting in Third Space? It was an AMBI party.

For Thais Duarte-Power, “AMBI is a piece of Brazil here in Dublin”, she said.

Within the framework of AMBI, via the Roda Literária project, Paula de Souza Bello Stechman Ribeiro teaches classes designed to foster an appreciation for Brazilian literature and enhance kids’ reading and writing skills in Portuguese, she said recently.

“The Roda [Literária], in some way, was going to give a brushstroke on this matter of reading and writing and … share Brazilian literature with the children,” she said.

The Saturday sessions featured authors such as Ana Maria Machado, Helena Kolody, Olavo Bilac, and Cora Coralina, she said. And forms such as haiku, sonnet, quatrain, sung legends and cordel, she said. 

The book project originated with the students, says Ribeiro. 

They wanted to make a poem for each of Brazil’s five regions, she says. And the poems turned out so well that Ribeiro and the students wanted to publish them as a book, she says.

She connected with small publisher An Bean Sí for the project. "I said: wow, that’s exactly what the kids wanted. And it worked. It was a perfect match,” she said.

The project was not without its challenges, says Ribeiro. 

Maintaining the kids’ motivation to the end proved difficult, as was navigating the varying levels of Portuguese proficiency – especially in writing, she says.

There were copies for sale at a book launch 22 November, and they’re still available now via AMBI’s Instagram, says Ribeiro.

The authors

On 17  November, at five-ish in the evening, three of the young authors talked about their experiences making the book, in a video call.

Cían Duarte-Power, who is 10 years old, was the first to appear on camera, wearing a grey suit and a white shirt and tie. 

His mother, Thais Duarte-Power, later expressed surprise at his attire. “He dressed up like that himself and came for the interview,” she says. 

Cían said his mother is from Brazil and his father is from Ireland. He learned Portuguese from his mother and found the language "very cool", he said. 

A few minutes later, Valentina Moreira, Sophia Ciara Silva do Amaral Alves, and Isabella Pereira Ercolani joined the call. The authors began to share their favourite parts of creating the book.

Duarte-Power said his favorite part was writing the poems, particularly the haiku. "What was fun is that I could make a poem about anything," he said, "it just needed to be that type of poem."

His favorite region to write about is the Northeast (Nordeste), which he said gave him "more inspiration". He says he liked the animals of that region that he learned about, specifically the arara (macaw).

Ercolani, who is 12 years old, says she’s really pleased that all their hard work on the book project has paid off. 

“I am so happy that after so much work we made it, you know?” she said.  “I'm also a little nervous because I wrote a book.”

A few days later, Diana Cruz, the mother of 10-year-old Mia Kidney, another one of the authors, sent along a video of Mia in front of a Christmas tree, reciting her favorite poem – about the cold in Brazil.

The authors also talked about how they use the Portuguese they’ve been learning, and practising, at Ribeiro’s classes at AMBI.

Ercolani said she speaks Portuguese with her mom and Italian with her dad.

Alves, who’s 12, said she enjoys being able to speak Portuguese at home, she says. “Because my parents are from Brazil and I am able to talk to other people.”

Duarte-Power said he loves knowing more than one language. Knowing Portuguese has helped him in understanding Italian, French, and Spanish, he said. 

Moreira said her favourite Portuguese word is familia (family), which, she says, to her means “everyone that is in Brazil”.

Networks

On that recent Saturday, at Third Space, in Smithfield, the Moreiras – mother and daughter – got up to leave. 

They joined the flow of the crowd at the Christmas market, and headed south, for more fun weekend activities. 

They were headed to Thomas Street for a visit to a second-hand shop, founded by Brazilian Lidia Marina Szabó.