Poet Adélia Prado has shunned the spotlight since her discovery in 1976 – then a 40-year-old mother of five. Her literary career was launched by Brazil's foremost modern poet, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, with the announcement that St Francis was dictating verses to a housewife in the backwaters of the interior state of Minas Gerais.

She writes about the transcendent in ordinary life, of how the human experience is both mystical and carnal. Now aged 80, her sensual, devout, sometimes provocative poetry is read and admired around the world.

Picture: Adelia Prado, Credit: Eve Streeter