Bio
A Portuguese poet, fiction writer, and career diplomat, Luís Filipe Castro Mendes was born in 1950; while still very young—between 1965 and 1967—he contributed to the newspaper Diário de Lisboa-Juvenil.
He earned a law degree from the University of Lisbon in 1974. He was politically active both before the events of April 25, 1974, and in the period immediately following, up until 1977, when he began his diplomatic career.
He served as Consul General in Rio de Janeiro and as Portugal’s Ambassador to Hungary, India, UNESCO (Paris), and finally the Council of Europe (Strasbourg). He served as Minister of Culture from 2016 to 2018.
He published his first book, Recados, in 1983, followed by Areias Escuras (1984), Seis Elegias e Outros Poemas (1985), A Ilha dos Mortos (1991), O Jogo de Fazer Versos (1994), Viagem de Inverno (1993), Correspondência Secreta (1995), Modos de Música (1996), and Outras Canções (1998). Os Dias Inventados was published in 2001, followed by Lendas da Índia (2011), A Misericórdia dos Mercados (2014), and Outro Ulisses Volta para Casa (2016). In 2018, he published a collected works volume titled Poemas Reunidos. He published a new poetry collection, Voltar, in 2021, followed in 2025 by As Manhãs que Não Conheces. In 2023, he published a collection of articles titled Um Estranho Animal de Duas Cabeças, and in 2024, another collection of published articles titled A Tentação da Prosa. In 2025, he published Países Estrangeiros (Foreign Countries), a book of travel writing and memoirs.
He has a poetry collection published in Brazil (Poemas Reunidos, 1999) and works translated into German (Fremde Nahe, 2018) and French (Légendes de l’Inde, 2020).
He received the Teixeira de Pascoaes National Poetry Prize in 2021 for his body of work, and had previously won poetry awards from the PEN Club (A Ilha dos Mortos), the Casa de Mateus Foundation (the D. Diniz Prize for O Jogo de Fazer Versos), and the António Quadros Foundation (the António Quadros Prize for Lendas da Índia).
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