Circe Maia, (born June 29, 1932, in Montevideo), is a Uruguayan poet, essayist, translator, and teacher.

Her parents were María Magdalena Rodríguez and the notary Julio Maia, both originally from the north of Uruguay.

The sudden death of her mother when she was 19 left a somber mark on Maia's first book of mature poetry which was published when she was 25 (En el tiempo, 1958).

People, objects, personal tragedies, the art of painting, and the passage of time are some themes she has "uncovered", and by doing so has revealed the human condition.

For more than fifty years she has avoided letting her poetry become self-contained, the sort of literature that ends up as monologue.

Her poems have been set to music by Daniel Viglietti, Jorge Lazaroff, Numa Moraes, and Andrés Stagnaro, among others.

That her poetry has been part of the spirit of the times can be seen in the Uruguayan nueva canción group of the late 1970s Los que Iban Cantando, whose name was inspired by a poem in her book En el tiempo (1958).

This song, sometimes performed in combination with the poem Desaparecidos by Mario Benedetti, became a Latin American anthem against the military regimes that committed forced disappearances, especially those participating in Operation Condor:[7]

Dicen que no están muertos —escúchalos, escucha— mientras se alza la voz que los recuerda y canta.