Mozambican poet Jeconias Mocumbi recently won the first Floriano Martins International Lusophone Poetry Prize, organized in Chile.

The author achieved this feat with his book "Os Dedos da Agonia", which, as a result of the award, will be published this year in a bilingual edition, Portuguese and Spanish, by LP5 Editora in the Plateado 2024 Poetry Collection.

The jury of the prize wrote in its minutes of deliberation of the winner that the distinguished work presents an emotional density with which the author conveys the dramas of the national liberation struggle against the Portuguese colonial regime.

"On the surface of the verses, other situations overlap the specific case of the fight against terrorism in Cabo Delgado, which right from the start is announced in the quote from Ibrahim Traoré, leader of Burkina Faso, also a military man, giving the work a breadth that deserves attention, given that the cultural production and history of sub-Saharan Africa, due to colonization, was silenced for centuries," reads the document.

The judge added that "in addition to the book's poetic value, it contributes to the understanding of a continent that has bled and is still bleeding, with countries torn apart in search of their roots and their place in the world". (Text and image: Newspaper News)