The Proceedings of the UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese Graduate Conference

“Glimpses of the exile in Cecília Meireles and Florbela Espanca’s poetry” The aim of this paper is to analyze the work of two poets, Cecília Meireles and Florbela Espanca, in order argue that being exiled does not, necessarily, mean being geographically dislocated. Although exile has never been imposed to either writers, anguish and suffering, whether in a higher or lower scale, is present in their work. This unpleasant feeling is possibly associated to the harm of being misplaced in the environment they live in. Nevertheless, this statement applies not only to their work but also to their own lives, seeing that they were both women writers, and to the literary period they both created their poetry. Thus, we propose a dialogue between Cecília Meireles and Florbela Espanca’s poetry in the attempt of finding a place where the speakers of those poems belong. Along this path, we are able to catch a glimpse of their displacement as well as their pursuit of belonging or being part of the world.