Um Poeta em Forma de Assim

Alexandre O’Neill (1924-86), who described himself as “a major minor poet”, spoke about serious matters in unserious terms. He was afflicted with the “disease of words”, a healthy, playful infirmity that contaminated others, such as Malu Vilas Boas, the creative mind who, in 2024, the poet’s centenary year, brought to the stage Um Poeta em Forma de Assim: Visita guiada à cabeça de Alexandre O’Neill [A Poet Just Like So: A Guided Tour of Alexandre O’Neill’s Head]. Ana, a guide at the Museum of Poetic Thought, leads us through O’Neill’s universe. His poetry and persona come alive before our eyes through music, sound design and creative play with words, as abstract and complex concepts become palpable objects. How does the Poem-making Machine work? What use has the Giant Dictionary? In this show, O’Neill’s poems come to us through the poemoke, a karaoke for singing and reading. There is an “archive of memories”, a “bottle of invented words” that failed to satiate him. Ultimately, it is his inexhaustible appetite for life and creativity that is celebrated and conveyed in this guided tour for children and/or young people. “Please thank O’Neill.”