“They settle down on us / they dwell within”: A. M. Pires Cabral’s Attunement with Birds

Recent studies prove that imagination is a constructive process that transports the reader from one place to another, from one time to another, offering the possibility to inhabit another consciousness. To interpret, which in itself is an act of attention, opens a door to otherness, to kinship and empathy, asking from us affective responses towards human and nonhuman others. Drawing upon an ecocritical perspective, this paper considers how the depiction of birds in A. M. Pires Cabral’s poetry illustrates the way human dialogue with the nonhuman is a powerful tool in contemporary rediscovery of nature. The paper argues that by thinking with birds, the poet transforms not only his own self, but also the way readers envision the nonhuman other. Although Cabral’s passion for birds is not unique but part of a tradition that goes back to medieval bestiaries, I argue that at a time of biodiversity rarefaction his poetic depiction of birds is an expression of the human affection attuned to the more-than-human world; mostly, however, this paper invites discussion on the poet’s multilayered affection for birds as a result of his recognition that thinking with birds prompts, ultimately, deeper thinking about human beings.