Vírgula d'Interrogação is a new publishing house in Portugal, with roots in the Algarve, presented on October 29, at Jardim Botânico da Ajuda, in Lisbon.
Diana Almeida, obstetrician in Faro, long connected to the world of writing by passion, and Isa Silva, graphic designer and illustrator, residing in Lisbon and current president of Associação Urban Sketchers Portugal, are the most visible faces of Vírgula d'Interrogação publishing house.
As stated by Diana Almeida, responsible for editorial coordination, «the Comma d'Interrogação is born out of the frustration that shop windows bring us: shapes, covers, titles, names... so the same, so repeated. Then there are the books that are not, because they no longer exist, stopped being sold or did not even deserve the national bet that would publish them in translation. And so we feel frustrated. From frustration to the decision to bring about change on our own terms, it was a short distance and our publishing house was born».
The central concept of Vírgula d'Interrogação is «disruption with the established norm» and this applies to everything: the book-object, its appearance, content and the voices that write it.
With many ideas, the concept to begin with was to give life to the idea of «Graphic Poetry». In a parallelism with the graphic novel, the poetic text is translated into images, snapshots of the feeling that the text produced in the artist, resulting, for each text, a visual journey that enriches it.
The exploration of the concept of Graphic Poetry began with Camões. «Because Camões is the poet of Portugal and is rooted in each of us, this graphic adaptation of ten sonnets shows more of his potential, as it not only enriches the text, but also updates it and enhances an intrinsic quality of poetry, which is the its timelessness», says Diana Almeida.
According to Isa Silva, responsible for graphic coordination, «graphically interpreting Camões and some of his most beautiful poems is not an easy task. When we look at the cover, we find a Camões with his back turned, mysterious, but who, at the same time, invites us to discover this book that opens the Graphic Poetry collection of the recently launched publishing house Vírgula D'Interrogação».
Through the strokes and colors of ten illustrators, a graphic path was created that is expected to do justice to the weight of this homage.
Alexandre Esgaio, Ana Ramos, Bruno Vieira, Cátia Oliveira, Filipe Goulão, Isa Silva, Isabel Alegria, Olga Neves, Rosário Félix and Vicente Sardinha were the ten illustrators invited to create fifty illustrations that make «Camões» a unique book full of diversity visual. This is Comma D'Interrogação's tribute to one of our great creators in the word world.
To approach with originality is one of the mottos of the «Comma D'Interrogação», which still gives an extra qb of responsibility.
«Camões» is on sale in the main online bookstores and on the publisher's website by clicking here.
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