Another disappointment

First poetry book, published in 2021. The work is part of a literary tradition that seeks to question national identity and its contradictions, articulating personal experiences with a critical reading of the historical and social context.

Romão constructs a collection of poems that address issues related to memory, childhood, individual formation, and the relationship with a country that oscillates between the promise of modernity and the vestiges of an authoritarian past.

The writing is characterized by attention to detail, maintaining a rigorous and demanding register. Mais uma Desilusão is an exercise in cultural diagnosis, which confronts the reader with the complexity of a reality in transformation. 

In Abysmo: "In his first poetry book, Valério Romão joins the long tradition of creators whose work contains a facet of questioning and diagnosing the strange and apparently incurable condition of "being Portuguese".

Starting from the reflection in the mirror, he contrasts his own formative experiences – including childhood memories and growing pains – with the fertile territory of contradictions and promises of a country orphaned from its Atlantic fantasy and the territories that belonged to it, launched into the arms of a deep-pocketed European Union with – apparently – reasonable demands, eager to shake off the mold of five decades of dictatorship to finally reach the long-desired and mysterious modernity and, while we are at it and in the same breath, adulthood.

At a time when Marshall McLuhan's prophetic expression, according to which "the medium is the message", conforms even to the reality of poetic creation, bending the verse to a perfect Cartesianism in perpetual flux, Romão opts for the latitude of a composition incompatible with the milking of the contemporary like, where the effervescent teenager of the nineties gaming machine coexists with packs of fierce autists and the nightmare of a radical and irremediable tropicalization that ends up transforming the rectangle into a lesbian seaside resort and every Portuguese person into a curator of other people's memories."

Valério Romão was born in 1974, in France, but lived much of his life in Portugal. He is a writer, translator, and playwright, recognized for his intense approach and exploration of the darkest areas of the human experience. Author of novels, plays, and short stories. Among his most well-known books are Autism, O da Joana and Cair para Dentro. Valério Romão remains alive and active in the Portuguese literary scene, being considered one of the most singular voices in contemporary fiction.