Carlos Drummond de Andrade

He has become something of a national cultural symbol in Brazil, where his widely influential poem "Canção Amiga" ("Friendly Song") has been featured on the 50-cruzado novo bill.

Biography

Drummond was born in Itabira, a mining village in Minas Gerais in the southeastern region of Brazil. His parents were farmers belonging to old Brazilian families of mainly Portuguese origin. He went to a school of pharmacy in Belo Horizonte, but never worked as a pharmacist after graduation. He worked as a civil servant for most of his life, eventually becoming director of history for the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service of Brazil.

Drummond drifted towards communism at the start of World War II and took up the editorship of the Brazilian Communist Party's official newspaper, Tribuna Popular, but later abandoned the post due to disagreements over censorship, which Drummond staunchly opposed.

Drummond's work has been translated by American poets including Mark Strand and Lloyd Schwartz. Later writers and critics have sometimes credited his relationship with Elizabeth Bishop, his first English language translator, as influential for his American reception, but though she admired him, Bishop claimed she barely even knew him. In an interview with George Starbuck in 1977, she said, "I didn't know him at all. He's supposed to be very shy. I'm supposed to be very shy. We've met once — on the sidewalk at night. We had just come out of the same restaurant, and he kissed my hand politely when we were introduced."