Poetry as Ritual: The Sacred and the Wounded Voice of Isilda Nunes

Illustration: AI

In contemporary Portuguese literature, few voices intertwine mythology, spirituality, and intimate confession as organically as Isilda Nunes. A poet and visual artist, Nunes creates works that transcend artistic boundaries, transforming poetry into a ritual of remembrance, resistance, and inner transformation. Her latest collection, Litania aos Deuses que me abandonaram (Litany to the Gods Who Abandoned Me), continues this poetic journey, inviting readers into a world where abandoned temples, forgotten gods, and wounded bodies become metaphors for the modern human condition.

Nunes writes from the threshold between faith and doubt, silence and revelation. Her poems are inhabited by figures who have endured abandonment, violence, and spiritual exile, yet who continue searching for meaning beyond suffering. Rather than presenting mythology as distant cultural heritage, she restores it as a living language capable of articulating contemporary emotional experience.

The opening poem, Summoning the Absent Gods, immediately establishes the symbolic architecture of the collection. Greek deities appear not as objects of worship but as silent witnesses to human vulnerability. The lyrical voice calls upon Aphrodite, Apollo, Hades, Hecate, Poseidon, Demeter, and Eros, only to discover that divinity itself remains absent. Yet from this abandonment emerges the possibility of transformation. The poem culminates in one of the collection's most powerful images: the self reborn "nto a phoenix. Into light. Into poem. Here, poetry itself becomes an act of resurrection.

Throughout the collection, the female body occupies a central symbolic position. It appears alternately as temple, altar, sanctuary, oracle, and landscape of memory. In poems such as The Silenced One, the body bears the scars of violence and imposed silence, yet gradually reclaims its voice. Silence itself becomes material—woven into a black shawl, transformed into language, and ultimately broken by speech. Nunes presents poetry not simply as artistic expression but as liberation from inherited silence.

Another recurring motif is descent. In Katabasis – I Descended, the classical mythological journey into the underworld becomes an inward exploration of grief, identity, and rebirth. Echoes of Persephone, Orpheus, and the Sibyls resonate throughout the poem, not as literary ornamentation but as archetypal companions in an existential pilgrimage. The descent becomes necessary because only by confronting darkness can the poet return carrying the secrets stolen from death.

This symbolic landscape extends beyond individual experience. Litania aos Deuses que me abandonaram forms one half of a carefully conceived poetic diptych together with Liturgia aos Deuses adormecidos (Liturgy to the Sleeping Gods). While the first volume articulates an intimate cry born of abandonment, the second broadens this meditation into a reflection on collective suffering and the spiritual crisis of contemporary society. Together they construct a sustained philosophical and poetic inquiry into the fragile place of humanity within a desacralized world.

The collection is further enriched by a thoughtful postface by Albanian poet and literary critic Agron Shele, whose reading illuminates the symbolic, spiritual, and human dimensions of Nunes's poetic universe, inviting readers to engage with its multiple layers of meaning.

Isilda Nunes belongs to a lineage of poets for whom literature functions not merely as aesthetic creation but as spiritual inquiry. Her poems do not seek easy consolation or definitive answers. Instead, they invite readers to inhabit uncertainty, to confront silence, and to recognize that even abandonment may become the beginning of revelation.

In Litania aos Deuses que me abandonaram, poetry emerges as prayer, testimony, and transformation. It reminds us that language remains one of the last sacred spaces where human vulnerability can still be transfigured into beauty.