Born in Algarve, Portugal, 1938. His cultural activity began in 1953 and includes contributions to newspapers, poetry readings, poetic works, fiction, essays, diaries and translations. His activity has also involved countless lectures and colloquia at schools, factories, cultural associations and universities at home and abroad, included rather frequent attendance at conferences and poetry festivals all around the world. He has edited several literary magazines.
He is president of the Portuguese P.E.N. and director of poetry festivals Portugal. He was President of the Association Européenne pour la Diffusion de la Poésie. He is advisor of the World Haiku Association.
He is the author of 41 titles of poetry, fiction, aphorisms and essays and his works have been included in more than 150 anthologies and translated into 22 languages. Several prizes for his work, including some international prizes, the last of them the first "Poetry International Prize Leopold Sedar Senghor" (2002) and the "European Poetry Prize" (2005).