School hosts book launch for Angolan cultural foundation

We pride ourselves on offering our students so much more than language skills when they sign up to one of our courses. Modules and research opportunities related to a range of subjects including literature, culture and politics are available to our students and our events programme reflects this throughout the year.

This April, as part of the Borders & Bodies research theme of the School, we hosted a book launch for Dr António Agostinho Neto’s Complete Poetry.

Agostinho Neto is considered to be Angola's preeminent poet. He served as the first President of Angola between 1975 - 1979 and is also well known also for his political poetry in Portuguese.

The aim of the event was to disseminate Agostinho Neto’s poetry more widely in the English-speaking world and to celebrate a large donation of books given to the University by the Fundação Dr. António Agostinho Neto; a foundation set up to promote Agostinho Neto. The foundation also works to improve the welfare of Angolans and promotes education, science, technology and culture. The foundation was represented at the event by Director, Miguel Luvumbu.

At the book launch, Professor Pires Laranjeira of the University of Coimbra gave a talk about Agostinho Neto’s life, political interventions and poetry, following which Professor Laranjeira, staff and students of Portuguese gave readings of selected poems  in both Portuguese and English. We were delighted also to welcome guests from the Angolan community in Wales, and the Angolan embassy in the UK.

The event was preceded by research seminars on anti-colonialism and resistance, with guest speakers Dr Louise Hardwick of the University of Birmingham and Dr Branwen Gruffydd Jones of the Cardiff School of Law and Politics.

Images of the book launch are available on the Fundação Dr. António Agostinho Neto website