At the opening of Medellín Poetry Festival, it rains world poems

By Ashraf Aboul-Yazid,
President of Asia Journalists Association

MEDELLÍN: The Medellín International Poetry Festival opened its XXXII edition on Saturday with a rain of poems to celebrate the reunion with the public on the return to the event after taking refuge in virtuality for two years due to the pandemic.

At the Carlos Vieco open-air theater in Medellin, poets from seven countries opened the festival, which will run until July 30 under the slogan “World Peace, Peace with Nature,” and read their poems before some 1,500 spectators.

“Poetry is the synthesis of the spiritual history of humanity, of the deep past of humanity, and it is the wave expression of the struggle of the present,” said the director of the festival, Fernando Rendón, at the opening.

The Carlos Vieco open-air theater on Cerro Nutibara has been a main venue for this International Poetry Festival.

It is July 23; as the 32nd Medellín International Poetry Festival began in its face-to-face mode. Spectators were able to attend and enjoy literature and poetry accompanied by poets from more than 83 countries, including Colombian authors. Some of them are Víctor Gaviria, Albeiro Montoya Guiral, Diana Carolina Gutiérrez, Lucía Estrada and Yenny León; among other poets of the region.

The event was inaugurated on Saturday afternoon of July 23, with a reading of poems at the Carlos Vieco open-air theater, on Cerro Nutibara, in which authors of different nationalities met, such as Tamya Sisa Morán, from Ecuador; Victor Gaviria, from Colombia; Vera Duarte, from Cape Verde; Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn Dycki, from Poland; Pelin Batu, from Turkey; Esteban Ríos Cruz, from Mexico; Mei Er, from the People’s Republic of China, and Nimrod, from Chad.

The opening ceremony was also celebrated with music, with a concert by the Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra that presented The Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha.

The programming is enriched with meetings for the entire population that is interested in talking, learning and enjoying around literature and poetry. There will also be courses, workshops, conferences and some concerts.

The Medellín International Poetry Festival ended its virtual programming on July 22, which began on the 9th of that same month, to start the face-to-face programming.

“The Festival inspired the creation of the World Poetry Movement and other international poetry festivals inside and outside Colombia. If poetry can be assimilated by the process of the Historical Pact in this country, and contribute to mobilize the population, developing bonds based on identity, on mutual solidarity, on trust in a future forged by a constant conscious popular struggle, with clear objectives and tasks, if Colombia can become the country it dreams of, and poetry is part of its dream, one day Colombia will radiate its deep spirit to the world and will be a paradigm of social change in the world.”

These were the words of Fernando Rendón; the renowned Colombian poet and founder and director of the International Poetry Festival of Medellín, for more than three decades.

The International Poetry Festival of Medellín (Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín) is an annual festival held the second-largest city of Columbia. It was founded in 1991 when Medellín had a reputation for violence, and from its beginning the festival has attempted to offer an alternative.

In 2006 the festival was one of the recipients of the Right Livdlhood Award. The citation for the award explained that it was given “…for showing how creativity, beauty, free expression and community can flourish amongst and overcome even deeply entrenched fear and violence.” The festival has also won a Spanish literary award for its contribution to peace among other things. In 2011 the World Poetry Movement was founded in the context of the World Gathering of Directors from 37 International Poetry Festivals, held in Medellín.

On Sunday July 10, I recited my poems when over 5000 viewers were following the live broadcasting via social media platforms of Facebook and YouTube. These are three of the poems I read, followed by their translations into Spanish:

A Vision

I give the birds their wings,

I give the sea its thundering waves,

I wave pieces of cotton to the sky,

I spin its thread into rain,

to decorate the dress of the earth

with its motives,

When my season of harvest

is coming,

farmers offer me sacrifice

prayers and utensils.

They wrap me in a scarf with iris flowers

dotted with dew,

as I extend the sails of innocence,

Virginity,

Surprise,

Courage,

For feasts and celebrations!

Then, I could decipher

The engraved texts on the talisman:

“In the womb of truth,

There were twins,

And that battle was the first”.

 

The Whisper of the Sea

The river of skulls are two banks of humans

When I moved with destiny

They said: He committed suicide!

Oh river say:

Who are  your  victims?

Or who are your killers?

 

A Street in Cairo

The man who returned home,

In his short break,

Does not have but two days:

A day for his arrival,

And a day for getting ready for departure.

A day to cry on seeing her,

And a day for her to cry on the farewell scene.

A day to open his arms for friends,

And a day for hugging their mirage.

A day to tell them about the war,

And a day for their tales of the war’s victims.

A day for life,

And a day for an eternal death.

The man who returned home,

In his short break, remembers:

When the war started,

They put targets on his eyes,

They closed his mouth with

the tank nozzle,

and how he died before smelling

the gunpowder.

The man who returned home,

In his short break,

Is welcomed by a street in Cairo,

And two sidewalks,

Where he poured in the distance between them

The sands of his exiled deserted body,

Counting the papers burned in

The lost wars,

Under the fire and light poles.

The man who returned home,

In his short break,

Is similar to this street where

The processions of sadness pass,

Leaving noting but pain.

A street in Cairo

Deserted for two thousands years,

Full of dried trees and people,

Filled with a mixture of mud and bones,

But it always looks like a river,

As life looks like death!

The man who returned home,

In his short break,

Is just a street in Cairo,

With balconies of despair,

With lost wars dancing inside him,

With feet sinking in blood and dead bodies,

Those killed ones that sleep in his heart

After finishing their roles in the news.

The man who returned home,

In his short break,

Is seeking a vision

In the hand spread between two cities,

With lines sketched by years,

Made of sands and winds.

The man who returned home,

In his short break, is asking:

“How many last wars will be enough?”