Background
Leminski was born in Curitiba, in the Brazilian state of Paraná, in 1944. His father, Paulo Leminski II, was of Polish descent, and his mother, Áurea Pereira Mendes, was Afro-Brazilian.
composer journalist professor translator writer poet
Leminski was born in Curitiba, in the Brazilian state of Paraná, in 1944. His father, Paulo Leminski II, was of Polish descent, and his mother, Áurea Pereira Mendes, was Afro-Brazilian.
In 1965 he became a history and creative writing teacher, even though he had never finished college.
He was famous for his avant-garde concrete poems and haiku. In 1958, Leminski was sent to the Monastery of Saint Benedict, in the city of São Paulo, where he stayed throughout the whole year. He was also an expert judo sensei.
He moved temporarily to Rio de Janeiro in 1969, returning to Curitiba in the following year.
In 1975, his first major work, Catatau, was published. lieutenant is an experimental novel, written in prose poetry, dealing with an imaginary visit of philosopher René Descartes to Brazil alongside Prince John Maurice of Nassau during the Dutch invasions of Brazil in the 17th century.
Catatau would draw the attention of some of the most important cultural personalities of the time, such as Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Zé and Moraes Moreira. In the following years he would publish some anthologies of his poems, the most notable ones being Distraídos Venceremos, Haitropikais (a collection of his haiku) and Caprichos e Relaxos.
His second avant-garde novel, Agora É que São Elas, was published in 1984.
However, it was not as well-received as Catatau. Leminski was a polyglot. He could fluently speak French, English, Spanish, Japanese, Latin and Greek.
He translated into Portuguese works by Petronius, John Fante, Alfred Jarry, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Yukio Mishima.
An enthusiast of the culture of Japan, Leminski would write a biography of famous 17th-century haiku poet Matsuo Bashō in 1983. He also authored biographies of Leon Trotsky, João da Cruz e Sousa and Jesus Christ.
In 1988, Leminski divorced Alice Ruiz after a 20-year marriage, with whom he was working in conjunction with in his last poetry book, Louisiana Vie en close, that was published posthumously in 1991. Leminski was a heavy drinker, and died on June 7, 1989, of liver cirrhosis.