Patricio Ferrari

Argentine-Italian poet, editor, and translator

Patricio Ferrari

Patricio Ferrari is a polyglot poet, literary translator, and editor. He holds degrees from the Sorbonne (MAS), Brown University (MFA), and the University of Lisbon (PhD). As translator and editor, he has published more than 20 books, including the complete works of Fernando Pessoa’s three heteronyms—Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis—(with Margaret Jull Costa), and The Galloping Hour: French Poems by Alejandra Pizarnik (with Forrest Gander), both from New Directions. His other book-length translations include works by António Osório (Portuguese), Frank Stanford, and Martin Corless-Smith (English).

In 2025, Ferrari received the Fence Modern Poets Series Prize for Mud Songs, the first volume of his Elsehere trilogy—an exploration of migration, identity, and the vernacular soundscapes of Buenos Aires. He coined the term “poetic heterophony” to describe poetry shaped by multiple linguistic systems, each revealing a distinct self or enacting a process of self-othering through an adopted language.


Based in New York City since 2017, Ferrari teaches at Rutgers University–Newark and in the MFA Program at Sarah Lawrence College. He is also the host of “World Poetry Salon,” a collaboration between Limelight Poetry (founded by Wang Yin) and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation branch of the New York Public Library.


Ferrari has been awarded residencies from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Shanghai Writers Association, and the T.S. Eliot Foundation. He is currently at work on Skeins, Book II of the Elsehere trilogy, and Solunar, a collection of poems written in English and inflected by Mandarin. These projects continue his inquiry into poetic heterophony and the ways expression unfolds through the displacement and resonance among languages.

cover of the book The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro

The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro

Here, in Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari’s splendid new translations, are the complete poems of Alberto Caeiro, the imaginary master of the “heteronym” coterie created by the Portuguese modernist Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa conceived Caeiro around 1914 and may have named him loosely after his friend, the poet Mário de Sá-Carneiro. What followed was a collection of some of Fernando Pessoa’s greatest poems, grouped under the titles The Keeper of Sheep, The Shepherd in Love, and Uncollected Poems. This imaginary author was a shepherd who spent most of his life in the countryside, had almost no education, and was ignorant of most literature; yet he (Pessoa) wrote some of the most beautiful and profound poems in Portuguese literature. This edition of The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro is based on the magnificent Portuguese Tinta-da-china critical edition, published in Lisbon in 2016, and contains an illuminating introduction by the editors, Jerónimo Pizarro and Patricio Ferrari, some facsimiles of the original Portuguese texts, and prose excerpts about Caeiro and his work written by Fernando Pessoa as well as his heteronyms Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis, and other fictitious authors such as Antonio Mora and I. I. Crosse.

Buy the paperback for $18.95

cover of the book The Galloping Hour

The Galloping Hour

The Galloping Hour: French Poems—never before rendered in English and unpublished during her lifetime—gathers for the first time all the poems that Alejandra Pizarnik (revered by Octavio Paz and Roberto Bolaño) wrote in French. Conceived during her Paris sojourn (1960–1964) and in Buenos Aires (1970–1971) near the end of her tragically short life, these poems explore many of Pizarnik’s deepest obsessions: the limitations of language, silence, the body, night, sex, and the nature of intimacy.

Drawing from personal life experiences and echoing readings of some of her beloved/accursed French authors—Charles Baudelaire, Germain Nouveau, Arthur Rimbaud, and Antonin Artaud—this collection includes prose poems that Pizarnik would later translate into Spanish. Pizarnik’s work led Raúl Zurita to note: “Her poetry—with a clarity that becomes piercing—illuminates the abysses of emotional sensitivity, desire, and absence. It presses against our lives and touches the most exposed, fragile, and numb parts of humanity."

Click here to see book notes by Patricio Ferrari, editor of The Galloping Hour

Buy the paperback for $16.95

cover of the book The Complete Works of Ricardo Reis

The Complete Works of Ricardo Reis

Here is the fourth in a series of volumes by Fernando Pessoa’s celebrated “heteronyms,” a coterie of writers that Pessoa created and conceived as distinct personalities, each with a unique literary style. Ricardo Reis was imagined as a melancholic doctor “with a darkish complexion,” a self-taught Hellenist who exiled himself in Brazil because he was a monarchist. In a 1914 letter to Pessoa, the writer Mário Sá-Carneiro described Reis’s odes as “admirable,” “a marvel of impersonality,” praising the way he “achieved a Horatian, classical novelty.’” Based on the definitive Tinta-da-China edition, published in Lisbon in 2016, this bilingual collection includes an illuminating introduction by Pessoa scholar Jerónimo Pizarro, facsimiles of original manuscripts, and prose excerpts written by Ricardo Reis on art, on life, and on the writings of Pessoa’s other heteronyms. Magnificently translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari, The Complete Works of Ricardo Reis is a must-have collection by one of Pessoa’s most refined heteronyms.

cover of the book The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos

The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos

Álvaro de Campos is one of the most influential heteronyms created by Portugal’s great modernist writer Fernando Pessoa. According to Pessoa, Campos was born in Tavira (Algarve) in 1890 and studied mechanical engineering in Glasgow, although he never managed to complete his degree. In his own day, Campos was celebrated—and slandered—for his vociferous poetry imbued with a Whitman-inspired free verse, his praise of the rise of technology, and his polemical views that appeared in manifestos, interviews, and essays. Here in Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari’s translations are the complete poems of Campos. This edition is based on the Portuguese Tinta-da-china edition and includes an illuminating introduction about Campos by the Portuguese editors Jerónimo Pizarro and Antonio Cardiello, facsimiles of original manuscripts, and a generous selection of Campos’s prose texts.

Addendum to The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos by Patricio Ferrari and Margaret Jull Costa:

https://www.ndbooks.com/book/the-complete-works-of-alvaro-de-campos/notes/

Buy the paperback for $21.95

cover of the book The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro

The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro

Here, in Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari’s splendid new translations, are the complete poems of Alberto Caeiro, the imaginary master of the “heteronym” coterie created by the Portuguese modernist Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa conceived Caeiro around 1914 and may have named him loosely after his friend, the poet Mário de Sá-Carneiro. What followed was a collection of some of Fernando Pessoa’s greatest poems, grouped under the titles The Keeper of Sheep, The Shepherd in Love, and Uncollected Poems. This imaginary author was a shepherd who spent most of his life in the countryside, had almost no education, and was ignorant of most literature; yet he (Pessoa) wrote some of the most beautiful and profound poems in Portuguese literature. This edition of The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro is based on the magnificent Portuguese Tinta-da-china critical edition, published in Lisbon in 2016, and contains an illuminating introduction by the editors, Jerónimo Pizarro and Patricio Ferrari, some facsimiles of the original Portuguese texts, and prose excerpts about Caeiro and his work written by Fernando Pessoa as well as his heteronyms Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis, and other fictitious authors such as Antonio Mora and I. I. Crosse.

Buy the paperback for $18.95

cover of the book The Galloping Hour

The Galloping Hour

The Galloping Hour: French Poems—never before rendered in English and unpublished during her lifetime—gathers for the first time all the poems that Alejandra Pizarnik (revered by Octavio Paz and Roberto Bolaño) wrote in French. Conceived during her Paris sojourn (1960–1964) and in Buenos Aires (1970–1971) near the end of her tragically short life, these poems explore many of Pizarnik’s deepest obsessions: the limitations of language, silence, the body, night, sex, and the nature of intimacy.

Drawing from personal life experiences and echoing readings of some of her beloved/accursed French authors—Charles Baudelaire, Germain Nouveau, Arthur Rimbaud, and Antonin Artaud—this collection includes prose poems that Pizarnik would later translate into Spanish. Pizarnik’s work led Raúl Zurita to note: “Her poetry—with a clarity that becomes piercing—illuminates the abysses of emotional sensitivity, desire, and absence. It presses against our lives and touches the most exposed, fragile, and numb parts of humanity."

Click here to see book notes by Patricio Ferrari, editor of The Galloping Hour

Buy the paperback for $16.95

cover of the book The Complete Works of Ricardo Reis

The Complete Works of Ricardo Reis

Here is the fourth in a series of volumes by Fernando Pessoa’s celebrated “heteronyms,” a coterie of writers that Pessoa created and conceived as distinct personalities, each with a unique literary style. Ricardo Reis was imagined as a melancholic doctor “with a darkish complexion,” a self-taught Hellenist who exiled himself in Brazil because he was a monarchist. In a 1914 letter to Pessoa, the writer Mário Sá-Carneiro described Reis’s odes as “admirable,” “a marvel of impersonality,” praising the way he “achieved a Horatian, classical novelty.’” Based on the definitive Tinta-da-China edition, published in Lisbon in 2016, this bilingual collection includes an illuminating introduction by Pessoa scholar Jerónimo Pizarro, facsimiles of original manuscripts, and prose excerpts written by Ricardo Reis on art, on life, and on the writings of Pessoa’s other heteronyms. Magnificently translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari, The Complete Works of Ricardo Reis is a must-have collection by one of Pessoa’s most refined heteronyms.

cover of the book The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos

The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos

Álvaro de Campos is one of the most influential heteronyms created by Portugal’s great modernist writer Fernando Pessoa. According to Pessoa, Campos was born in Tavira (Algarve) in 1890 and studied mechanical engineering in Glasgow, although he never managed to complete his degree. In his own day, Campos was celebrated—and slandered—for his vociferous poetry imbued with a Whitman-inspired free verse, his praise of the rise of technology, and his polemical views that appeared in manifestos, interviews, and essays. Here in Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari’s translations are the complete poems of Campos. This edition is based on the Portuguese Tinta-da-china edition and includes an illuminating introduction about Campos by the Portuguese editors Jerónimo Pizarro and Antonio Cardiello, facsimiles of original manuscripts, and a generous selection of Campos’s prose texts.

Addendum to The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos by Patricio Ferrari and Margaret Jull Costa:

https://www.ndbooks.com/book/the-complete-works-of-alvaro-de-campos/notes/

Buy the paperback for $21.95

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