Ricardo Aleixo

Ricardo Aleixo composes poems, performs words, dances ideas, and vocalizes images. His work unravels the interrelationship of codes in the – not necessarily linear – processes of creation. However, the idea of codes is insufficient, because, before the word, the letter can express not one language, but several: the image, the vocalization, and its sound. In the poet’s own words, “listening to the letter and writing the voice” is the synthesis of his work and artistic performance.

The poetry of Ricardo Aleixo, who has dedicated himself to the medium for over forty years, connects with everyday life, but not only that. It informs affections, but not only that. It is/can be the feeling itself; it can narrate a dream or be the dream itself. In Palavrear, he opens paths so that we can wander through the labyrinth that he knows “for having it / by heart at the tip of my feet.”. In this journey, the landscape of his “compositions” is continuously altered by contexts, real and historical, which impose contingencies on the poet, the individual, the place where he lives and the language he speaks. Aleixo updates the concept used by concrete poets based on the work of James Joyce and calls his poetry “reverbivocovisual,”, working in the written, visual, and sound dimensions. The body is added to this as an instrument that emulates, incorporates, presents, and even carries poetry. And in this poetic body everything is expression, as in the performances with the “poemanto,” a kind of parangolé 1 with which he makes the “corpographies.”

pérola mathias
translated from Portuguese by philip somervell

Ricardo Aleixo (Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil, 1960. Lives in Belo Horizonte) is an intermedia artist and researcher of literature, other arts, and media. In 2021, he received the title of Notório Saber (Notable Knowledge), equivalent to a doctoral degree, from UFMG. He has published eighteen books, including notable works such as Modelos vivos (2010) and his most recent works, Extraquadro (2021, one of the five finalists for the Jabuti Prize 2022), Sonhei com o anjo da guarda o resto da noite (2022), and Campo Alegre (2022). His works blend poetry, fictional prose, philosophy, ethnopoetics, anthropology, history, music, radio art, visual arts, video, dance, theater, performance, and urban studies. He has performed in almost all Brazilian states and in the following countries: Argentina, Germany, Portugal, USA, Spain, Mexico, France, Switzerland, and Angola. His works are exhibited in the permanent exhibitions Rua da Língua and Falares at the Museu da Língua Portuguesa in São Paulo, Brazil.