Ombro, Arma!

Portuguese writer José Manuel Mendes was born in September 1948 in Luanda. He chose the city of Braga as his home, where, since adolescence, he distinguished himself as a fighter against the dictatorial power established by the Estado Novo regime, within student, associative, and political movements.
He completed his higher education in Coimbra, graduating in Law. Not practicing law, he dedicated himself to teaching, working in secondary education between 1968 and 1980. After this pedagogical/didactic experience ended, he was elected federal deputy, where, for 11 years (1980-1991), he always proved to be a staunch defender of democratic ideals.
Returning to teaching, she teaches the Social Communication course at the University of Minho.
A prestigious writer in intellectual circles, with around 30 published titles ranging from poetry to essays, the author demonstrated his creative inclination from a very young age, having published his first book of poetry at the age of 15.
The recognition of this vast body of work has transcended the borders of our country, and many of his books have been translated into several languages ​​and included in anthologies of Portuguese literature published in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Belgium. This is the case with Presságios do Sul (Omens of the South), winner of the ITF Grand Prize for Literature, in a bilingual edition published in Belgium.
Observing everything around him, the author's work reflects the daily life, the past and the future of an anonymous people, whose "pains" don't appear in the newspapers, in the words of the Brazilian poet/singer Chico Buarque de Holanda.
In 1990, the King of Morocco gave him the title of "Commandeur du Ouissam Aloui "And in 1995, he was decorated by the President of the Republic, Mário Soares, as a Grand Officer of the Order of Merit."
Characterized by great aesthetic and formal rigor, their texts reveal the profound social concerns of someone who, according to Maria Augusta Silva in the Diário de Notícias of October 1998, "In each dream, he envisions a world that is more fully dreamed of. A more humanized world. ".
His literary activity also extends to his participation in Portuguese and foreign cultural newspapers and magazines, programs on RDP and Rádio Universidade do Minho (RUM), and also in the cultural programming of the Book Fair held annually in Braga, not forgetting his responsibility in organizing beautiful moments of recited poetry held in several countries, namely Portugal, Spain, Brazil, France, Germany and Belgium. As a consequence of this work, RUM released a CD entitled Últimos Barcos (Last Boats), with poems of his authorship.
The Cultural Council of the University of Minho, aware of the place that José Manuel Mendes occupies in the Portuguese cultural scene, organized a tribute to him in commemoration of his 50th birthday.
Author of a multifaceted body of work, some of his titles include: Short Stories - Shoulder, Gun! (1978) and The Raven Man (1989); Novel - Strip away the fog (1984) ; Poetry - Hope Attacked ; Earth's Threshold (1983); Discontinuous Face (Poetic Anthology, 1992) and Omens from the South (1993).