José Gomes Ferreira

José Gomes Ferreira, GOSE, GOL (July 9, 1900 – 1985) was a Portuguese poet and fiction writer with a vast work of varied influences. Gomes Ferreira was also a political activist that participated in the resistance against the dictatorship of Oliveira Salazar, becoming later a member of the Portuguese Communist Party. In the late 1970s he occupied the presidency of the Portuguese Writers Association.

A native of Porto, Ferreira graduated in law in 1924 and became a consul in Norway in the late 1920s. Soon after, became a journalist and published his works on several progressive magazines. After the rising of the right-wing dictatorship led by Salazar, Ferreira acquainted himself with the democratic resistance movements. During the later years of the regime, he continued publishing and saw his poetic work recognized by his peers. After the democratic Carnation Revolution, Ferreira joined the Communist Party and continued his work until the mid-1980s.

His artistic work was representative of his concern with social problems, a mirror of his leftwing ideology. His poetry had varied influences, ranging from neorealism to surrealism, in a dialectic relation between his own ego and the need to share other people suffering.

José Gomes Ferreira was born in Porto, in the north of Portugal, in 1900. When he was four years old his parents moved and settled in Lisbon. Ferreira made his early studies in the Camões High School, and soon started reading Portuguese literature, mainly Raul Brandão. After some time he became the director of a magazine titled Ressurreição (Resurrection), where he collaborated with one of the major names of the Portuguese literature, Fernando Pessoa.

Influenced by his father, a republican, Ferreira developed strong political ideas, and after completing the military service, he joined the Republican Academic Battalion, a republican organization created by university students in order to protect the young Portuguese Republic against monarchism.

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