Excerpted from the award statement by

ANTÓNIO RAMOS ROSA NATIONAL POETRY AWARD júri minute

(José Tolentino Mendonça, Nuno Júdice, Adriana Freire Nogueira)

City of Faro, July, 26. 2017:

"For its thematic coherence, linked to the theme of the voyage, for the originality of a universe that is not limited to description, Mediterranean captures, in each poem, the essential details in which European history and culture are projected. This is a book where the South appears represented in all that the Mediterranean means in our culture. Greco-Latin antiquity is transported to the present, crossed with the Judeo-Christian matrix. Mediterranean is a book that presents us with a poetry that reflects our cultural roots as living elements of our daily lives.This is a remarkable book by João Luís Barreto Guimarães, celebrating the encounter of his poetics with this world of memories, correspondences and voices."