Bio-bibliographical information regarding participant poets in the XVIII International Poetry Festival of Medellin

Bio-bibliographical information of invited poets to
the XVIII International Poetry Festival of Medellin

July 5th to 12th, 2008

Poets from África

• FRANK CHIPASULA was born in Malawi on 16 October 1949. Editor and fiction writer. He holds a B.A. (with Credit) from the University of Zambia, an M.A. in Creative Writing from Brown University, an M.A. in Afro-American Studies from Yale University and a Ph.D. in English Literature from Brown University. Chipasula’s Visions and Reflections (1972), a pioneering book of poetry in English by a Malawian poet, was followed by O Earth, Wait for Me (1984), Nightwatcher, Nightsong (1986) and Whispers in the Wings: New and Selected Poems (1991). He is currently working on The Burning Rose: New and (Re)Selected Poems. He has also edited the following ground-breaking anthologies of African poetry: When My Brothers Come Home: Poems from Central and Southern Africa (1985), (with Stella) The Heinemann Book of African Women’s Poetry (1995) and Bending the Bow: An Anthology of African Love Poetry (Fall 2008). His fiction includes the novels, In the Shadow of that Stone and In a Dark Season (in progress). His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, newspapers and anthologies on the three continents in English, French, Spanish and Chinese. “Frank M. Chipasula comes to us with rich language and a bursting, compassionate heart. I have seldom encountered poetry which expresses so much pain as his reports of monstrous state atrocities in Southern Africa in Whispers in the Wings. His vision is full of righteous rage and its power is overwhelming in such poems as A Hanging and A Grain of Salt.”—Adrian Mitchell, (one of the most respected 20th Century poets), London, U.K. "Chipasula expresses in his thought provoking and beautifully written poetry a deep pain towards the conditions that lead him into exile.”
  


• ASHRAF AMER is an Egyptian poet and journalist. He wrote six collections of poems and two collections of poems for children. Most of his poetry was published in most of the prestigious Egyptian and Arab newspapers and magazines. Some of his poems have been translated into some foreign languages including English and Spanish. He wrote a number of songs for very famous singers from Egypt, Algeria, and Palestine including the “Martyr Anthem” that has become one of the national anthems of Algeria for which he was honored by the Algerian Writers Union and the Martyr Society. Ashraf also wrote songs for some children plays and TV series. He participated in a number of poetry and cultural activities in Egypt and the Arab world and supervised the cultural seminars for the Bahraini Ministry of Education for seven years. He has been practicing journalism for 30 years during which he headed several Egyptian and Arab newspapers and supervised the cultural pages in some other newspapers. He wrote several daily and weekly columns in Egyptian and Arab newspapers and magazines. He is currently serving as the Editor-in-Chief for Al Ayam Newspaper and he writes a weekly column in Al Jamahir Newspaper. He is also the manager and owner of “Stamba Group for Arts and Publishing” which has been established since 20 years. Published poetry: Windows - published in three editions: special edition Cairo 1983, Dar El Thaqafa 1986, El Ealamyia Publishing House 2002; My Views limited editions (1986); Night Female Doers – published in three editions: El Sharqiya Publishing House (Manama 1988), El Nadim Publishing House (Cairo 1988), El Ealamyia Publishing House (Cairo 2002); Butterfly's Discoveries – limited editions (1990); Our Carpenter. The Artist – poetry for children, published in three editions: El Obiykan Publishing House (Ryiadh 1993 and 1994), El Ealamyia Publishing House (Cairo 2002); Color and Imagination - published in three editions: El Obiykan Publishing House (Ryiadh 1993 and 1994), El Ealamyia Publishing House (Cairo 2002); He is Almost.. Sure Merit Publishing House 2008; Poetic View of the "The Educated and the Authority" Book for painter Ezz El Deen Naguib, El Ealamyia Publishing House (Cairo 1997). Member of the Artists and Writers Association in Cairo (Attlee), Member of the Egyptian Writers Union, Member of the Egyptian Publishers Union.


YOLANDE MUKAGASANA was born in Rwanda in 1954. She survived the Rwandan genocide of 1994. She lost her three children as well as her husband, brothers and sisters. In memory of the genocide and with a view to assist the reconstruction of the country, she wrote three books entitled La mort ne veut pas de moi (Death does not want me), N'aie pas peur de savoir (Don't be afraid to know), and Les blessures du silence (Wounds of Silence). Today, Yolande has formed a new family by adopting three of her nieces who were orphaned in the genocide. She built a new house where she used to live in Rwanda and looks after around twenty orphans. She created the Association Nyamirambo Point d'Appui, Foundation to Remember the Genocide and Assist the Reconstruction of the Country. The head office of the Association is in Brussels while the Rwanda counterpart is an NGO called Nyamirambo Point d'Appui which aims to support the regeneration of the Rwandan social fabric. Yolande Mukagasana devotes her time and effort into informing and educating people on living together in the midst of differences, and gives conferences in schools and associations. Among the many awards she has received are the Alexander Langer Foundation Testimonial Award, in Italy (1998); Award for International Understanding Between Nations and for Human Rights conferred by the European College of the Iena University, in Germany (1999); The Peace Golden Dove Award conferred by the Archivio Disarmo Association of Rome; Woman of the 21 st Century for Resistance Award, in Brussels (2003); Honourable Mention for Peace Education by UNESCO, in Paris (2003). Yolande Mukagasana has co-authored the theatre play entitled Rwanda 94 in which she plays her own role. Publications: La mort ne veut pas de moi, éditions Fixot, 1997; N'ai pas peur de savoir, Robert Laffont, 1999; Les blessures du silence, Actes Sud, 2001.


• FREEDOM NYAMUBAYA rural development activist, dancer and writer, was born in Uzumba near Nyadire Mission in Mashonaland East Province in 1958.Cutting short her Secondary School education in 1975; she left to join the Zimbabwe Liberation army in Mozambique. While battling on the frontline she achieved the rank of FFOC (Female Field Operation Commander), later being elected Secretary for Education at the first Zanu women’s League Congress in 1979. She has also founded MOTSRUD, a local Marondera-based NGO that provides ago-services to rural farmers. Her love of the traditional mbira music has seen Freedom performing on platforms like a possessed spirit medium. To date Freedom has published 3 books: On the Road Again, published in 1986 by (ZPH) Zimbabwe Publishing House; Ndangariro, 1987 published by Zimpfep Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production; Dusk of Down, published by College Press 1995. She continues to contribute to poetry anthologies and short stories in Writing Still and Women Resilience. Freedom sees writing as a continuation of the struggle for a peaceful and better world. Currently Nyamubaya is the Chairperson of Maninga Conservancy which natures and breeds wild animals such as buffaloes kudus Sables lions, leopards and many more plain game. // “Poetry is my friend something I can trust and depend on in good and bedtimes’, poetry occupies the space especially during lonesome times. In poetry and musical rhythms, spiritual healing repairs cracks and potholes to replenish lost energy and boost hope. // The first time I wrote a book I was 13 years and the story was about myself. I struggled to educate myself and wanted to share my story with others since I was the only child with such a problem at this school. “OF CAUSE IT NEVER GOT PUBLISHED.”  I write because I like to communicate and associate with others. I enjoy writing because in the process of doing so I understand myself better. // In my first published poetry book “ON THE ROAD AGAIN”  the poetry captures events issues and feelings during and immediately after the liberation war. The poetry attempts to inform and educate people on what happened during the war, fear of betrayal by leadership and emergency of a dictatorship by a small minority claiming custody of the country and the disappearance of freedoms and human rights, In the poem on page 13 “A Mysterious Marriage”  in “ON THE ROAD AGAIN”,  the prophesy on the lack of freedoms is true today than any other time in Zimbabwe. // In “DUSK OF DOWN” the book captures day to day lives of ordinary people, female and male freedom fighters.  I attempt to describe real situations of groups and individuals at work from battle fields, prisons, to being raped by my own comrades. The book provides facts on specific experiences of the war encountered by ordinary people and freedom fighters which only come once in a life time. It also provides education on the history of Zimbabwe’s revolution from a participant’s point of view. // From my unpublished volume “IN THE ABSENCE OF VISION” the volume focuses on post independence time. I write about survival at the work place, dance hall, the streets and paths in towns and rural areas. It talks of the volcano that became the land repossession, revenge, hate, deterioration of morals looting and dictatorship. // Writing for me is the transformation from the use of guns and bombs to tools of genuine liberation, the pen, the mouth, the hands as a means to total freedom.


• OBI NWAKANMA was born on December 18th, 1966 in Ibadan, Nigeria. Obi represents New Voices From Nigeria (according to Harvard University at a recent Africa Events Reading). Poet, journalist and professor, he holds a BA degree in English from the University of Jos in Nigeria. Author of Thirsting for Sunlight and The Roped Urn, his first collection of poetry, winner of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Cadbury Poetry Prize in 1996 - he is at an advanced stage in the writing of The Stifled Sneeze, a biography of the late poet Christopher Okigbo who died during the Biafra war. His poems and articles have appeared in various publications and columns. OBI NWAKANMA was awarded the Gerald Moore Prize for writing at the University of Jos. Accomplished journalist for the "Vanguard", "Newsweek" international, the South African "Independent," among others. In Obi Nwakanma’s first collection of poetry published in the US, we have the voice of the traveler, navigating the divide, and the soul of a mystic, rooted in the vibrant culture of his people. (…) This is a myth-making poet in an age of prose and manifesto-poetry. Here is a painter's dream of poetry palpable in color and detail, whether of deities or scavengers; poetry fiercely alive with Agwü, Eke and Afö. “I write, borrowing the rapidly lost mystical world of the Igbo, and translating within it a contemporary regard for the condition of society: the contradictions of power, the tragedy of violence, such things. I also write about that part of my life that is pagan - my love of the sensual, the pleasure of the senses. Agwu afterall, is my creative avatar, and he loves wine and women.”


• JULIANE OKOT BITEK is a Vancouver writer who was born in Kenya in 1966 and raised in Uganda. The first time she had a poem published she was eleven years old and she has never stopped; now branching out into short fiction, drama and non-fiction.  She graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art (Creative Writing) in 1995 from the University of British Columbia. Her writing has appeared in several literary magazines including Arc, Whetstone, Fugue, and Room of One's Own. She has had several writing acknowledgements, her short story "Going Home" was an award winner at the 2004 Commonwealth Short Story Contest and was featured on the BBC and CBC and her essay, War No More, won first prize in the post-secondary essay competition in 2005.  She says: ““War no more” is a rallying cry that emotes the frustration that we feel, as witnesses to the seemingly never-ending wars that continue to inflict pain and destruction the world over. We are tired of war. War no more means that we must stop engaging in warring. We must redirect our energies into the creation of peace.  (…) This earth, this place is ours. “War no more” is more than a rallying cry to stop the fighting, the misery, and destruction. “War no more,” must propel us to make peace with ourselves, turn our energies to serving and preserving and making available the fruits of the earth to all citizens.” Another essay On Iris Chang’s Rape of Nanking also won a special mention in 2006 and is included in an anthology of winning essays from that year.  In 2007, Juliane received a Canada Council grant which has allowed her to spend time writing a collection of non-fiction. 


• ZOLANI MKIVA Zolani is one of the youngest practioners of one of the oldest oral traditions in africa, ukubonga (praise singing). Hailing from idutywa a small town in the eastern cape province of south africa, Zolani rose to prominence in 1990 when, barely a month after becoming a fully-fledged imbongi yesizwe (poet of the nation), the schoolboy was called upon to salute with a red hot rendition the recently released Nelson Mandela at his welcome home rally in transkei. This way, he officially came to be nelson Mandela’s poet laureate. Zolani studied social sciences in the University of the western cape, as he continued with the practice of his music. He has employed his poetry for musical compositions. As an imbongi, he practices improvisation because the lines of an imbongi are never fixed – they are improvised, at times melodic and at times melancholy. and not always guaranteed to please with tame platitudes. In Zimbawe he was saluted as the prince of afro-poetry. His first album as a solo artist “halala south africa” was released in 1997. After this album came an international release named “gaddafi” and many more records including  “mazenethole” and “brother leader”, as well as numerous collaborations with other artists. Also, Zolani is the founder and field worker for the Mkiva Humanitarian Foundation which helps the rural people on a number of issues relating to development of arts & culture, welfare and education. Zolani Mkiva is also the reigning, chief executive officer of the xhosa royal council which looks after the interests of his majesty, king xolilizwe sigcawu and the entire xhosa royal family.

Poets from América

• EDUARDO GÓMEZ was born in Miraflores, Boyacá, Colombia, in 1932. His poetry books include: Restauración de la palabra, 1969; El continente de los muertos, 1975; Movimientos sinfónicos, 1980; El viajero innumerable, 1985; Historia baladesca de un poeta, 1989; Las claves secretas, 1998 y Faro de luna y sol, 2002. Essay books: Ensayos de crítica interpretativa,-T.Mann, M.Proust, F. Kafka-; y Reflexiones y esbozos,- teatro, crítica y poesía en Colombia, among others. He studied Literature and Dramatic art in Germany. He also directed the Publications section of Colcultura and is co-founder, alongside Pedro Gómez Valderrama y Arturo Alape, of the National Union of Writers. He has been a European Literature professor for 30 years in the University of Los Andes and has taught at other universities such as Javeriana, ENAD, Pedagógica and Universidad Nacional. He translated El preceptor, a play by Brecht, and some poems by Goethe, from the German language. According to Guillermo Martínez González: “Seen as a whole, the work of Eduardo Gómez atracts because from it´s beginning it accomplishes a mature expression, a language that doesn´t disdain metaphors, at times surreal in nature through the wake of Neruda, it has been a guard of reflexive restraint, coherent in the persistence of obsessions that like the night, death, urban life, violence, marginal solidarity, have evolved from an atmosphere of acierated sarcasm, until the calm tone of the last books, in which experience and history impose the free balance of domination.
  
  
  
• BENJAMIN RAMÓN was born in Panama in 1939. Benjamin studied History and Philosophy at Panama University. He has devoted his literary career to short stories and poetry. He is a member of the Central American Community of Writers. He appears on the Critical Anthology of Young Panamanian Narrative México, 1971 and Rebellious Poetry in Latin America, México, 1979. He has earned distinctions in national and international contests for his poetic and narrative work: Cundeamor, short story, 1966, Honorable Mention in ESSO Awards of Panamá;  Sólo el mar, 1968 Honorable Mention in Young Poetry Games of Peru; Camión, 1972, University Award of Poetry; Amanecer de Ulises, 1983 y Las Ilusiones Perdidas, 1987, both Prize of Summer Poetry of the National Institute of Culture of Panama, and Música Sabida, Finalist of the Miró Poetry Award, 1991, published in 2001. Poetic work: Puta vida o Esta ciudad que mata y otras alegrías, 1969; No trespassing, 1973; El mundo es más que el hombre, 1977; Árbol, mediodía, 1983; No olvidemos y otros poemas, 2001. Two short story books: Contra reloj, 1992 y En un 2 por 3, 2007. Since 1999 he edits Camino de Cruces magzaine. Mario García H. says, “the book of poetry Puta Vida is a text that mixes facts of national and international occurrences in it’s discourse. In this fusion language seeks to express concepts of the poet´s and the country´s everday life. From the historic perspective, the verses mark certain social issues that happened in Panama, from the second half of the nineteenth century until 1968.” And according to the editor Luis Eduardo Henao: “Benjamín Ramón´s poetry, not only has an emotional function but can also contain a background of struggle and a political message, like in those contained in “No olvidemos” (Let us not forget). The country in the conjuncture of the end of the century offers the appropriate occasion and spaces to collectively remember  dates, places, names, dreams and fears that support the efforts of history and, whether we know it or not, move us and encourage us.”


• GLADYS CARMAGNOLA was born in Guarambaré, Paraguay, in 1939. Children´s books Ojitos negros, poemas de amor dedicados a un niño, 1995; Navidad, 1966; Piolín, 1979; Lunas de harina (Relatos de Cualquierparte), 1999; Paseo al zoológico, 2003. For adults she published poetry books: Lazo esencial, 1982; A la intemperie, 1984; Igual que en las capueras, 1989;  Depositaria infiel, 1992; Un sorbo de agua fresca, 1995; Territorio esmeralda, 1997; Un verdadero hogar (1960-67), 1998; Banderas y señales, 1999; Río Blanco y antiguo, 2002; Una rosa de hierro, 2005; Poema de la celebración, 2005. Co-founder of the Society of Writers of Paraguay and Associated Paraguayan Female Writers, member of the PEN Club and other cultural associations. Some of her awards incluye: Jose Maria Heredia Award from the Association of Art Critics and Commentators of Miami, USA, 1985;  Fiambrera de Plata from the Ateneo of Popular Culture Córdoba, España, 1989; Unique Poetry prize from the German Paraguayan Cultural Institute, 1992;  Honorable Mention from the Nacional Literature Awards, 1995;  Poetry Readers Award 1995; Municipal prize of Literature, 1996; among others. Various Acknowledgements: from the Municipalities of Asunción, Luque, Guarambaré, Ypacaraí; and the Nacional Museum of Fine Arts,  2004, The Lion club, and many other institutions of all levels.  Hugo Rodríguez-Alcala, National Literature Award, professor, intellectual and critic of excellent merits, has said of her:  “This is a poet that has the tricks of the trade and uses them, that knows how to write verses, that has something unique to say and says it in her own voice. She has also been named “Ambassador of wind and rain”.”
  


• CLÁUDIO WILLER born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1940. Poet, essayist and translator. Some of his published books: Anotações para um Apocalipse, 1964; Dias Circulares, 1976; Jardins da Provocação, 1981; Volta, 1996; Estranhas Experiências, 2004; Poemas para leer en voz alta, 2008. Translator to the Portuguese for Conde de Lautréamont, Antonin Artaud and Allen Ginsberg, among others. As a critic and essayist, he has collaborated in supplements and cultural publications such as: Jornal da Tarde, Jornal do Brasil, revista Isto É, jornal Leia, Folha de São Paulo, etc. In several occasions he has been  president of the Brazilian Union of Writers. He studied sociology, pyshcology and has a PH.d in Compared Literature. Co-editor of the electronic magazine Agulha Perceptive writer of manifestos, where he has stressed: “Poetry is at the same time transitory and essential, it reports itself to the foundations, to that which is concrete behind appearances, and simultaneously aims at its own end, at its disappearance as an independent form of art or communication..."  In his second manifesto, he calls the attention on the fact that poetry cannot be separated from its social component. Referring to one of the key subjects in his work, he states: "... love is good, we say it thus, because it transforms the world, it confuses us with the world, it allows us to feel the world in the temperature of our body, as I observe in Poetic, or it is those wonderful landscapes, lakes, mountains, landscape of rising sun, of the series Poems to read aloud, that at the same time are the body of our loved one, our bodies, which are something else and for that reason they are more themselves, bodies; the woman is white, destination, they want to arrive there, to reach her, to find her; in my poetry, the companion is more of a departure point, I already arrived there, and now I want to set records straight with the world, as I affirm in the poem To arrive there, I do not want to leave stone over stone.”


• JUAN ANTILLÓN  was born in San José of Costa Rica in 1940. The safest and most direct source to get information about Juan Antillón’s poetry is his own essay “Sobre la Poesía” (About Poetry), which is included in his book “Rosa de Papel” (Paper Rose): “One can justify the existence of communication difficulties in a message of great complexity and high level of abstraction, but it cannot be justified in entangled words utterly devoid of logical coherence” (...) “the poet discovers hidden shades of reality, but he does not invent that reality” (...) “because the use of absurd concepts only diminishes poetic thought" (...) “When there’s an excessive use of ornaments, of rhetoric, both in the substance and formality of a poem the result tends to be equally deplorable." (...) “Consequently, if my poetry is formally simple is because I intentionally made it so, it is a simplicity that was accomplished by refining the sentences a lot until I obtained what I wanted; which is the clarity of the word, not the simplification of the content. “Another thing which I have abided by (…) is the search of beauty in my sentences, their musicality, rhythm and harmony” (...) "And by this I don’t mean metric and consonant rhyme, which can of course aid or facilitate the attainment of that harmony; if one does without such crutches and makes free verses, one is not renouncing the harmonic imperative, but looking for it in a higher level of expression (...) It must also be considered that you are working in a physical plain, that is, a sheet of paper, a colorless space where graphical signs will be scattered forming a drawing (...) that space must be used like one more way of expression, as well as the distribution of the words in that space (...) my usage of broken verse (...) as a rhythm resource, a way of substituting punctuation or a parallel expressive resource. But behind it is also the importance I give to each word-symbol (...) Optically, the division of the verse allows the conscious eye of the reader to obtain a complete perception of the thing, giving each symbol its specific weight, which is something that does not usually happen when reading long verses; in this cases the reader is left with an mere impression, a global final emotion, but what interests me is the construction process that compromises the reader’s conscience (...) In the end, there certainly it that global emotion, but there have been many things more on the way. (…) A poem is then constructed with exquisite precision, starting from what we so vehemently wish to communicate and ending in the obtainment of such communication.  If someone thinks that kills poetic emotion by taking from it a certain spontaneity, it is because he has not stopped to think what intense childbirth every note in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony had. (...) Emotion, that I know of, has never been at war with intelligence ".


• JAIME QUEZADA was born in Chile in 1942. Poet, essayist and literary critic. He studied Law and Literature in the University of Concepción, where he founded the literary group Arúspice and the poetry magazine of the same name. Author of Poemas de las cosas olvidadas, 1965; Las palabras del fabulador, 1968; Astrolabio, 1976; Huérfanías, 1985; Un viaje por Solentiname, 1987; No liberto hombre, 1991; Escritos Políticos, 1994; Por un tiempo de arraigo, 1998; Bendita mi lengua sea, 2002; El año de la ira, 2003; Adamita, 2003; Llamadora, 2004, Gabriela Mistral: Nuestra América 2005 and Gabriela Mistral una manera de vivir, 2007. He has studied and researched contemporary chilean literature (specially the life and work of Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Nicanor Parra, Gonzalo Rojas and Jorge Teillier). He was the president of the Chilean Writers Society (1989-1992). In the present he is director of the Poetry Workshop of the Pablo Neruda Foundation and president of the Gabriela Mistral Nobel Prize Foundation. For Iván Carrasco Muñoz, of the Austral University of Chile, “Jaime Quezada´s poetry arose under the frame of a given tradition (poetry of locations and antipoetry), incorporating elements that respond to a particular vision of the world. He has sung of everyday things, childhood, family, nature, loneliness. But in the developmente of his work he has destroyed that initial image, demystifying the magical childhood space, looking at the landscape with the eyes of a botanist and an ecologist, assuming a religious perspective, contemplative, prophetic and announcing the sin institutionalized in the world, the danger of humanity´s total destruction, and Chile´s historical contingency. Without a doubt, Quezada´s poetic work is a valuable contribution to contemporary literature. (…) The apocaliptic and prophetic tone of his poetry grants it a differential character in present Chilean poetry.”


• ARMANDO OROZCO TOVAR was born in Bogotá in 1943. He studied journalism in the Universidad de la Sabana, and is currently a professor of Humanities, Literature and Philosophy. He won the first prize in Bienal de Poesía Novel de la Provincia de La Habana, Cuba, in 1974. He won  the first prize in the National Poetry Contest held at the Universidad Central in 1981. His published works include the poetry books “Asumir el tiempo”, “Dealing With Time, 1980”, “Las cosas en su sitio” (Everything Has Its Place, 1983), “Eso es todo” (That’s All, 1985), “En lo alto del instante”, (At the Height Of The Moment, 1990; “Para llamar a las sombras” (To Call The Shadows, 1994). Luis Vidales said in the prologue of his first book: “ It’s not about simply making new poetry these days. That’s ok. But everything depends on the strategy used to grasp the reader. And Orozco gets him with the enchantment of a very straightforward and conversational poetry, full of familiar accents, from which the grandiloquent resonance of old school versification has fled”. And in the words of Ricardo Sanchez, “This poet is not in any anthology that I’ve read, nor does he belong to any literary group. He has spent his talent in occasional poems, very festive and political. He’s a survivor of the long road walked by left winged political idealists of the Sixties. Armando Orozco knows a lot of stories of that miserable and heroic, real and fantasizing life, that need to be recovered in their analytical and human dimensions. When he tells the story you can hear a madman speaking. He’s a nineteenth century fabulist.  He’s one of the actors of such times and is full of corrosive irony towards himself, his actions, his time and its actors”. And as Federico Díaz Granados said, "Armando Orozco has managed to create aesthetic fact and to find poetic fact, in the wonder that comes from the soul of man and which portrays the same desolated man, touched by an angel, by the wings of death and defeat, conscious that only through creative freedom and the mystery of words it is possible to know the essence of life and its manifestations”.


• ROBERTA HILL WHITEMAN (1947). Roberta Hill Whiteman, a poet of Wisconsin Oneida heritage, tribe that was forced to scatter throughout various parcels of land in the United States and Canada. is the author of Philadelphia Flowers: Poems (1996) and Star Quilt (1984), a poetry collection which integrates her ancestral culture with European-based approaches to verse. A sense of dispossession engendered by forced migration has long been a part of Oneida culture, and this attitude is evident in Whiteman's poetry. The selections in Star Child are centered around the concepts of six basic directions—north, south, east, west, the sky, and the earth. Whiteman credits the influence of other contemporary Native American writers as well as her musician father and well-read grandmother for instilling her work with its own rhythms and confidence. Whiteman stated: "For most of my life I felt this sense of exile and alienation and a fear.... But there is this sense of home and of completeness that I also feel. Somehow I think that part of the writing is to set the record straight—for myself, to explain things for myself as if I were still a child inside." Her poems weave nature into human experience, enhancing the reader's own respect for and identity with nature. Her style of relating small things with great ones is one quality of Roberta's work that draws in the reader and connects her/him with the poem's subjects. Whiteman writes and speaks with a deeply affecting honesty about her experiences as a Native American woman, experiences that are inseparable from the struggles of her people. Whiteman's poetry captures the slow movement from painful experiences of racism and anger toward a vision of hope, a dialogue with a more positive future.


• CHIQUI VICIOSO Sherezada “Chiqui” Vicioso was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, June 21st 1948. Graduated from Sociology and Latin American History at Brooklyn Collage, Nueva York, with a Masters degree in Education at Columbia University and postgraduate studies in Cultural Administration for the Getulio Vargas Foundation (Brazil). She has been honoured with the Anacaona de Oro in Literature and the Gold Medal to Women´s Merit in 1992. Her work includes: Viaje desde el agua, (Journey from the water) 1981; Un extraño ulular traía el viento (A Strange Wailing of the Wind), 1985; Volver a vivir: imágenes de Nicaragua, (To live again: Images of Nicaragua) 1986; Julia de Burgos, 1987; Algo que decir: ensayos sobre literatura femenina -1981-1991, 1991; Internamiento, 1992; Salomé Ureña de Henríquez (1850-1897): A cien años de magisterio, 1997. She has written plays such as: Wish-ky Sour, Nacional Theatre Award 1996; Salomé U: cartas a una ausencia; Desvelos (dialogue between Emily Dickinson and Salomé Ureña);  Perrerías,  and NUYOR/islas.  She has achieved a significant impact on Dominican literature and culture in the past three decades. She organized the first Circle of Dominican Women Poets now named Circle of Creative Women, as it has expanded to include more women. For many years she lived in the United States and her first writings reflect her North American upbringing, mainly in her very personal use of the spanish language. Since her return to Santo Domingo, in the early eighties, she has been untiring in the search for her roots and a personal poetic voice that distinguishes her from the women of her generation. Her first book, Viaje desde el agua, published in 1981, established her as one of the voices to be heard in the Dominican Republic. Sherezade, she of the thousand tales and the thousand shapes, has been given new life in the splendor and despair of the islands, lived in by and sung by a mulatta Sherezade of the Tropics, rising from the edge of the sea and memory, to celebrate our raw hybridity and our ancient and ever present legacies. // Daisy Cocco De Filippis, Author, /A Diaspora Position / New York, 2005.


• LUZ MARY GIRALDO was born in Ibagué, Colombia.  Essayist, poet and university professor. With musical studies in piano and singing, she has dedicated her past years to the study of Latin American contemporary narrative and poetry, with emphasis in Colombia, on which she has several publications. She  has participated in national and international congresses, seminaries and symposiums and has been invited to universities in Colombia, the United States, Spain and Italy. With several essay books, she has obtained national and international distinctions with the Ministry of Culture, the Distrital Culture Institute and the Andrés Bello Accord. As a poet she has been invited to Barcelona, Florence, Seattle, New York, Mexico, Venezuela and Hay Festival-Cartagena. She is the author of: El tiempo se volvió poema, Con la vida, Postal de viaje y Hoja por hoja. And co-author with Óscar Torres and Martha Canfield, of two books of poetry respectively translated to English and Italian. Her poems have also been translated to French and have been included in various anthologies in Colombia and abroad. She has directed workshops of literary creation and is presently a teacher in the Masters degree of Creative Writing at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. In an essay about the author, Franca Bacchiega states: “To tend towards harmony as a constant and primary search seems to be the conducting thread that ties all of Luz Mary Giraldo´s poetry together and gives it a very precise color where bliss and frustration, light and shadows, vitality and listlessness direct us towards a substantial search of pairing up opposites and an order in which they may be gathered, but, at the same time, the search for a nucleus to hold them, that may let them manifest themselves and fold themselves once again when their movement is done. This process, in which the author participates being implied in that which she observes and feels, becomes poetry.”


• GERMÁN CUERVO was born in Cali, Colombia. Writer and painter. He studied Advertsing at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University. He has obtained several literary awards: 1st national short story contest Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, 1972; national short story contest Pablo Neruda, 1973; Puertas de Oro contest, Madrid, 1981; 30 years Gran Colombia University Contest, 1982. He has published: Los indios que mató John Wayne, short stories, 1985; Historias de amor salsa y dolor, anthology of short stories, 1989;  El Mar, novel, 1994. El Viento en la Balanza, poetry award Jorge Isaacs 2006, is his first book of poetry.


• EDUARDO ESPINA was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1950. He published poetry books such as: Valores Personales, 1982; La caza nupcial, 1993; El oro y la liviandad del brillo, 1994; Coto de casa, 1995; Lee un poco más despacio, 1999; Mínimo de mundo visible, 2003 and El cutis patrio, 2006. He is also the author of essay books such as: El disfraz de la modernidad, 1992; Las ruinas de lo imaginario, 1996, and La condición Milli Vanilli. Ensayos de dos siglos, 2003. In Uruguay he was twice awarded with the National Essay Award for his books Las ruinas de lo imaginario and Un plan de indicios. In 1998 he obtained the Municipal Poetry Award for his unpublished book, Deslenguaje.  Thesis and extensive articles have been written about his poetic work, published in prestigious academic magazines like Revista Iberoamericana and Revista de Estudios Hispánicos. In Chile, Con/figuración sintáctica: poesía del deslenguaje, was recently published, a comprehensive study of Espina´s poetic work made by the spanish linguist Enrique Mallén, also author of: Poesía del lenguaje. De T.S. Eliot a Eduardo Espina. Espina´s poetry is studied in the United States, Europe and Latinamerica, and his poems were partially translated into English, French, Italian, Portuguese, German and Croatian. In the United States, where he lives since 1980, Espina is a co-editor of Hispanic Poetry Review. In 2007, he was awarded the Latino Literary Award for El cutis patrio for the best publication in the spanish language in 2006.


• JULIO CÉSAR ARCINIEGAS was born in Rovira, Tolima, Colombia, on June 6th, 1951. His published work includes works as The Invented City; Color of Fear; There’s Numbers Over the Temples. He Won the Porfirio Barba Jacob national poetry award for Abbreviation of the Tree. In Gabriel Arturo Castro’s essay “A Poet’s Labyrinth is a Battlefield”, talking about the book ““There’s Numbers Over the Temples” he says “... His writing is pronounced from tension, interiorized reading and movable imagination. His word is not direct, perhaps because the author is convinced that the poetic language distinguishes itself from the daily one by the perceivability of its construction, by the interest and desire to mold an artistic object... It does not matter that the writer is incapable of solving the riddle in the end, the intricate thing, for he stands raising his question to the readers, his virtual surprise that will take them to an inquisitive attitude, to the production of secrets and thoughts. In spite of the very hermetic and too contained images, the writer’s initial worries, either Metaphysical or religious, have been literaturized with the intention of creating a poetic object. His budding roots are of intellectual type, arisen not from the exclusivity of the most intimate and personal dive. The restlessness he expresses is a consequence of the frequent reading of diverse texts that is recreated and assimilated from a calm state. Poetry in his work is a possible rupture from unalterable daily reality, which, therefore, allows the intrusion mystery in real life. The poet finds himself before the inexplicable, facing the presence of unusual worlds and powers...”


• JORGE ELIÉCER ORDÓÑEZ was born in Cali, Colombia, April 16th 1951. Bachelor of Philology and Languages, UPTC, Tunja. Studies of Linguistics. University of the Valley. Cali. Masters degree in Hispano-American Literature. Instituto Caro y Cuervo, Bogotá. Professor of Literature and Arts of the Language in the UPTC, of Tunja, from 1991 to date. He has published poetry books such as: Ciudad Menguante, 1991; Vuelta de Campana, Awarded by the Fine Arts and Culture Institute of Boyacá, 1994; Brújula Insomne, 1997; Farallones, 2000; El Puente de la Luna, 2004; Desde el Umbral, poesía colombiana en transición, antología y estudio introductorio, 2005. With his essay La Fábula poética en Giovanni Quessep, he was awarded the Jorge Isaacs prize for Literary Criticism, 1998. He directs the institutional magazine of his university, UPTC, de Tunja, “Pensamiento y Acción”. (“Thought and Action”). He has published articles in magazines such as La Palabra (UPTC), Cuadernos de Literatura del Caribe e Hispanoamérica, Universidad del Atlántico, Itaca, Universidad Popular del Cesar, Logos, Universidad de La Salle, Espéculo, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (virtual), Casa de Asterión (virtual). According to Carlos Fajardo, “Ordóñez´s poetry catapults our imagination until it builds our childhood with it´s lustful and naughty games, the music of marimbas and drums, those neighborhoods of the periphery with strange and forgotten characters, the December lights lit by the father. This is how he invites us to go out to the roads so that, with the eyes of memory, we can see the big and small cosmologies with amazement,  and so that we may learn to feel the murmur and silences of his loving imagery.”


• JUANO VILLAFAÑEwas born in Quito, Ecuador, in 1952. He lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, since 1955. Cofounder of literary magazines such as Tientos y Diferencias (1979) and Mascaró (1983). He has published poetry books such as Poemas Anteriores, 1982; Visión Retrospectiva de la Botella, 1987; Una Leona Entra en el Mar, 2000 and 2005. Jesús David Curbelo refered to “Una Leona Entra en el Mar” saying: “From his first poems, brief, colloquial, but poetically colloquial, the poet indicates some of the fundamental directions of his searches: love –equally relevant in both it´s sentimental and erotic dimension, for a female or a country, for family or memory in the shape of salvation, to perpetuate an individual- and social and political concern, expressed in every moment of emotional inner experience in which man, history and poetry merge together as an  indissoluble unit. Certain symbolical obsessions appear –horses, the sea, rain, the act of drinking, dreams, music, dance – that will be repeated throughout notebooks in an ascending spiral, in a broadening of it´s possible meanings making polysemy more suggestive and gives the text itself and the book in general new resonances…” In his poetry there is a wise handling of what Leo Spitzer would call “chaotic enumeration”, present in the voices of many latinamerican poets such as Huidobro, Borges, Neruda, Paz, and in Villafañe it accomplishes the task  of giving us sometimes unusual metaphysical and symbolical associations, that enrich discourse and the tropological atmosphere of the poems.


• MANUEL GARCÍA VERDECIA was born in Holguín in 1953. He‘s a proffesor, writer, translator and publisher. He’s a bachelor of English and French language and  has a Masters degree in Cuban Culture, with a thesis on the 1930’s narrative. He has worked as professor in the Universities of Cuba, Canada, Czech Republic and Mexico. His essays talk about Cuban authors as Alejo Carpentier, Jose Lezama Lima, Gastón Baquero, Eugene Florit, Lisandro Knoll, Jose Soler Puig, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, César Lopez and Antón Arrufat, among others, and Hispanic American authors like Carlos Sources, Octavio Paz, Miguel Hernandez, Tomás Segovia, Máx Aub, Maria Zambrano, Jose Saramago and Jose de la Cuadra. He has published the essays Consecration of the Contexts, 1986; The Magical Word, 1991; the poem books Uncertainty of rain, 1993; Fibers, 2000; Thoughts of Ulisses Upon His Return, 2001; Ulisses Saga, and the short story collections Travels, 2004 and Wind Music, 2005. His most important translations include Disquieting Muses, a selection of Sylvia Plath’s poetry, in 2002; Intimate Strangers, a Cuban-Canadian poetry anthology, in 2004; Meridian, a novel by Alice Walker in 2004; Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman in 2006 and The Prophet by Khalil Gibram in 2006. In 2007 he won the José Soler Puig Award for his novel The Day of the Cross, as well as the Julian del Casal Award for his poem book Man of the Sling and the Stone.


• ALEX FLEITES was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1954. Cuban citizen. Bachelor in Philology at the University of La Habana. Poet, scriptwriter, dramatist, narrator, publisher, translator and journalist. He has been chief of important cultural magazines such as: El Caimán Barbudo, Cine Cubano, Unión y Arte Cubano. He has received numerous acknowledgements, including the National Poetry Award “Julián del Casal” and the National Award for Journalism "26 de julio”. Author of a dozen books, amongst his poetry books we find: A dos espacios, 1981; De vital importancia, 1989; Ómnibus de noche, 1995; Un perro en la casa del amor, 2004 and La violenta ternura, 2007, that gathers the most outstanding pieces of thirty years of poetic work. He has translated from portuguese poems of Vinicius de Moraes, Cecilia Meireles, Carlos Drumond de Andrade and Manuel Bandeira, with which he created the anthology Balada feroz, 1991. In his essay, Simply the radiant poetry, Gustavo Pereira tells us: “Alex Fleites has scrutinized, touched, tasted, erected, besieged, diluted the fruit of living and has discovered in it, as it happens to all mortal, ambivalent flavors, different dualities, bitter or sweet frustrations, fleeting joys and misfortunes or obstinate uncertainties and certainties. But, as they are processed by his sensitive conscience - that which many call spirit- become part of a greater mystery named by us simply radiant poetry.


• JORGE IVÁN GRISALES was born in Medellín, in 1956. Poet, playwright, actor and theater director. Member of the Taller de Artes (Arts Workshop) of Medellín. Professor at the Escuela Popular de Arte de Medellín (School of Popular Arts, Medellín) and the University of Antioquia. Publications: Los versos del nadador ciego, 1997 and Método para el manejo de la voz escénica: De la memoria de la voz a la imagen de la palabra, 2006. Juan Manuel Roca says: “In Grisales there is a fortunate attempt of trapping shreds of his roles on stage, in this occupation that demands ductility and, of course, the ability to create imagery. But here his images do not need a gesture, a platform, or even the body in which we are actors, directors and even a crowded audience. Because the poetic word is a detachment from the body that dictates states similar to dreaming. (…) Jorge Iván Grisales´ poetic journey is similar to a sleepwalker´s: to lay words out like a tense thread on top of which we cross over emptiness. It doesn´t matter if the protective net is torn. As all shepherds of emptiness, the poet knows that the ground wants him. It is about an adventure that has remained silent and that, every now and then, in many of his poems, points us towards the glimmer of light that a blind swimmer leaves behind, on water and paper.


• ISABEL GARCÍA MAYORCA was born in Guamal, Magdalena, Colombia. She studied journalism and Pedagogy. She has worked as high school teacher and is currently managing several creativity workshops for children. Her poems have been published in local, regional and national newspapers. She has done numerous presentations of her work in Bogotá and other important Colombian cities. She was a finalist of the poetry contest held in 2000 by the Rayo Museum. She was one of the winners of the “Contrababel de los Oficios” contest, held by the Casa de Poesía Silva in 2007. Her unpublished works are All April And What’s Gone of May; April In Mirrors; Cousin Mary’s Tales and Flight and Sun Poems, the last two of which are for children. “I met Isabel when I returned to the tropic after spending seven years in the rainy moor that is Bogotá. One afternoon a poet friend of mine invited me to his house. In his living room was a woman with almond shaped eyes that looked like Aztec obsidian. She kept quiet most of the time, always listening, but it was not her silence that intimidated me, on the contrary it invited conversation and I spoke so much that afternoon that time flew like magic. She suddenly read a poem. The words were simple and were, at the same time, arranged like actors who know very well what role they’re playing, and their implacably short destiny. Those words were like the extract of a singular experience, the one of a woman who lives among silence and passion. The words of Isabel, the woman I had just met, and whose eyes filled with metal overtones, with an empty sparkle, whenever she caressed the words with her velvety voice and brought to life the testimony of observed, understood and supportive love. What I want to say is that the woman with the obsidian, and often absorbed, eyes knew a music that was like an omen and as a trivial print of the everyday issues we link with our gestures and actions and that can only become poetry by the exercising of consummate art…” (Rubén Darío Flórez Arcilla).
• ÁLVARO MARÍN (Colombia, 1958). He has won several prizes for his poetry, studied zootechnics and now works in Communications and as a media and culture researcher. As an essayist, he writes about literature and the Colombian political scene. He has published two books of poetry and two of essays, and often writes for the national newspapers. Álvaro Marín has been influenced by César Vallejo, Miguel Hernández, José Lezama Lima and Luis Cardoza y Aragón. His poetry is a sum of strange images and supernatural voices, haunted by the figures of a harsh reality. Marín’s poetry is, as Lezama said, “the sacred challenge of absolute reality”. It is complex and difficult, touching and fascinating us, and opening up a dialogue within a ritualistic ceremony. It invites us to join in a solemn procedure full of tension, where banishment and prison are part of the narrative. // The poet describes his writing as “my ancient voice broken by powder”. It projects his “unfathomable silence”, a spiritual adventure that uses only the precise sign, the voice exploring hidden possibilities in the visual and dramatic elements of reality. He looks for the root, the invisible other half of facts and expresses it through powerful suggestion. His poems also demonstrate an affective crescendo, a widening of meaning, thanks to the emotive and metaphorical force of his language. // Emotion, perception, language, landscape, mystery and enigma are all affected by meanings derived from history and its development, which at the same time provide a space for utopia and renewal: Under a red sun the march goes on, // we are a vehement people, // rough like the peoples // descended from Abraham. // Besides being a journey through language, his poetry contains an intense interior life; its phrases are clear, vivid, meaningful and complete in themselves. The writing comes from a movement that casts history under a new light through mythological visions and poetic illuminations, because history, past and present, takes place in the imagination through the leading effect of memory. Each word retains a memory and language is charged with phantoms: “Our house is a history of devastating winds and bloody summers.” // “Man will come after the wild beast”, he predicts. Or he asks a disturbing question: “Why would we be forced to slide down these slopes of death?” Intelligence and imagination are united in his poetry; the remembrances or historical reconstructions it gathers expand, merging present and past into a rebellious totality, through a complex perception that breaks with our usual vision of the world. // Marín’s poetry demonstrates an alternative understanding of the human drama, an alternative to the origin of our condition as wandering, disinherited men and women, because “it is not the light of summer nor the aura of the rising sun, it is the candle of the forgotten ones lightning the street.” Or as he wisely says about his poetry: “It is a word born deep in the blood… [because] I etch the names of the fallen men.” (Gabriel Arturo Castro).


• LINA ZERÓN was born in México, in 1959. Poet, writer, journalist and cultural promoter. Director of Linajes Editores and Café México Magazine. Her poetry has been translated into 12 languages and has been gathered in 40 anthologies, magazines and newspapers around the World. She has been awarded several prizes both national and internationally. She was named “Woman of the year 2002” for her cultural work and her distinguished poetic trajectory in the State of Mexico and won a “Guerrero Águila” also for her trajectory as a poet. 11 poetry books to her name, including: Consagración de la piel. 2007. Ciudades donde te nombro, 2005 Nostalgia de Vida 2005. Un cielo crece en el fondo de tus ojos, 2004. Vino Rojo 2003, Moradas Mariposas, 2002, Amoradas Borbolestas, 2001, Rosas Negras para un Ataúd sin cuerpo, 2000, Espiral de fuego, 1999,  2 novels and a book of short stories. Claude Couffon tells us about Lina: “As a french translator of her poetry, I can say that her writing has a unique strength, that every verse is so simple and at the same time so powerful without  moving away from the poetic aesthetic. Her poetry has an incomparable strength that comes from the colourful, unexplored horizons that only she strips with shrewdness, effectiveness and without reluctance. Her images are forceful. Her imagination is beyond comparison. Zerón is a poet as there are few, concrete, deep and at times of sublime metaphors. There are many elements that stand out in her art, I cannot mention them all but I would like to emphasize on one of them specially: the music of words that resonate as instruments sparkling in dark silences. The melody of her verses allows readers to receive her poetry and discourse even more. This is why every poem is a light…”


• JOSÉ ZULETA was born in Bogotá in 1960. Director of the Estanislao Zuleta Foundation 1992 – 2008.  He directs the Literary Center “Voz Alta.” 2005 -2008. Director of the poetry magazine Clave. 2004-2008. Coordinator of the Literary Agenda of the Departamental Library of el Valle. He directs the program Libertad Bajo Palabra in the jails of Cali. Also he is an independent editor and cultural manager. Winner of the first national poetry award “Carlos Héctor Trejos”, Riosucio Caldas 2002, with his book Las Alas del Súbdito.  National poetry award  “Descanse en Paz la Guerra” with Música Para Desplazados, by the Silva Poetry House 2003. Second Internacional Poetry Award awarded by San Buenaventura University, with the book  Las Manos de La Noche, 2007. Other books: La Línea de Menta, 2005; Mirar Otro Mar,  2006 and La sonrisa trocada, cuentos,  2008. In the words of Elkin Restrepo, “…José Zuleta holds the ability to make the magic natural in things his own, without artifices or intellectual  rhetoric, which is what usually happens. His poems, clear, sensual, splendid, tied to small rituals and sudden perceptions to repeat oneself as a sentence, are moved by the grace of he who trusts every inquiry of the world to the senses and the power of immediate beauty.


• MARGO TAMEZ Lipan Nde'-Jumano/Suma' Nde' [Apache]-- Scholar. Margo Tamez was born in Austin, Texas in 1962. Activist and poet. Raised in San Antonio, Texas during the Civil Rights Movement and growing up during the Vietnam era made lasting impacts on Tamez' awareness of and responses to racism, gender inequity, and social in-justice. She completed two undergraduate degrees: Archaeological Studies (1984) and Art History (1985) at the University of Texas. In 1997 she completed an M.F.A. in Poetry in the Creative Writing Program at Arizona State University. She is widely known for her grass-roots work among traditional indigenous communities working for autonomy and justice against the combined threats of forced assimilation and genocide under colonialist and capitalist structures. Her writing explores experiences of marginalized indigenous groups which go against the myths and romantic notions of bi-national indigenous peoples of the Mexico-U.S. International Boundary (I.B.). In 2003, her first full-length collection of poetry, Naked Wanting, was released. Her book RAVEN EYE (Arizona 2007) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Raven Eye, a poetry collection, is a testimony of internalized racism within North American bi-national indigenous communities, and the thrust of violence perpetrated upon the most vulnerable. The Daughter of Lightning [published as individual essays] is a collection of essays [in progress] relating bi-national Nde' indigenous oral traditions from her mother's and father's families, who are the descendents of survivors of Mexico and U.S. sponsored, militarized and para-military hunt-downs, systemized indenturing and trafficking of Nde' women, children, elders and men. This collection of essays traces these genocide stories and diasporas of the Nde' through the early 18th century to the present.


• GONZALO MÁRQUEZ CRISTO was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1963. Author of Apocalipsis de la rosa, 1988; the novel Ritual de títeres, 1990; El Tempestario y otros relatos, 1998; La palabra liberada, 2001 and the anthology Liberación del origen, 2003 and Oscuro Nacimiento, 2005. Founder of the cultural magazine Común Presencia 1989. Maurice Blanchot International Essay Award for La pregunta del origen. Creator and coordinator of the international collection of Literature Los Conjurados, distributed in five countries. "Ritual de Títeres (Ritual of puppets) is a fight between philosophy and image that leads luckily to tragedy" (E.M. Cioran). “Apocalipsis de la Rosa is, in my opinion, a valuable example of what poetry should be… I am specially attracted to his sense of fundamental contrasts, his pact with surprise, his containment of language, his natural boldness to cross limits, the projection of silence that there is in his words, the search for sight and illumination instead of devices or maneuvers that only dazzle the unwary". (Roberto  Juarroz). This voice never subdues itself to the meaning of existence, be it metaphysical or social, because it´s shout has an elemental and uncertain strength, vibrant with blood, that turns into a liberating word, poetry. (Antonio Ramos Rosa).


• LIBESLAY BERMÚDEZ


• MORELA MANEIRO was born in Ciudad Bolivar, Estado de Bolivar, Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela, on August 19th, 1967. She is part of the Kari`ña indigenous community. She coordinated the national alphabetization program known as "La Misión Robinson" in the communities of the Estado de Bolivar. From age 11 she has been involved with social development movements and, through her art, she has interacted with several cultural educative institutions. She has participated in leadership courses on environmental defense and has also worked in workshops, seminars, photographic and handmade object exhibitions and literary festivals that praise indigenous culture; in addition to these activities, she has been an activist of indigenous politic and in exercising this activity has been postulated as candidate to the National Assembly (2000) and the Estado de Bolivar Legislative Council (2004). She has given several interviews to the national press and various radio shows, and has acted as moderator in a show on Venezuelan television (channel eight’s “Canal Abierto”). She has given conferences and educational conferences and has been invited to variousregional interest congresses in Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador, Puerto Rico and Peru. Through her formation she aims to strengthen interethnic sociopolitical, cultural and philosophic exchange and to defend the indigenous woman autonomy regarding territorial, environmental, ethnomedical and educational habitats, as well as defending fundamental human rights. She received the first prize of the Bilingual Literature Contest for her work “Ojos de Hormiga” (Ants’ Eyes), featured in the first edition of “Kuai Nabaida” (The Upper Sea, 2006) granted by the Venezuelan Ministry of Culture’s Fundación Editorial El Perro y la Rana (Editorial Foundation The Dog and the Frog). She is currently the president of the Marakawa Foundation, through which she supports the struggle of indigenous people to reconquer political and cultural relevance. In the words of Adalys Javier, "... the poetry of Morela Maneiro is deep, mystical, progressive, emancipating and revolutionary". “I was doing like the ant, going through labyrinths of earth and I began to recognize the stages and I began to see how deep it is to know oneself”


• PATRICK WOODCOCK was born in July 12, 1968 in Canada. He has had numerous poems published in Canada, The United States, The U.K., and India this year - many of which were written in and about Colombia.  He was the poetry editor for The Literary Review of Canada.  His poetry has been translated into eight languages and he has attended poetry festivals all over the world. Some of his Publications: The Six O’Clock Club, 1996; AThElia, 1997; Scarring Endymion, 1999; The Challenged One, 2003; AWOL: Tales for travel Inspired Minds, 2003; Controlling Mastema, 2005; 13 Executions (chapbook), 2007 and Theatre of Panic, Poems, New and Selected. He is a member of PEN Canada.  He has been an English Language and Literature Professor in the Corr University, Ibague, Colombia and an ESL Professor in the Colegio San Bonifacio de las Lanzas, Ibague, Colombia. As well as being a teacher of ‘The Elements of Poetry’ and ‘Canadian Literature – The Northern Experience’  Sheridan College, Oakville, Ontario, Canada.


• MIGUEL ILDEFONSO was born in Lima, 1970. He studied Literature at Catholic University of Perú and did a Master son Creative Writing at El Paso University, Texas. Poetry books: Vestigios, 1999; Canciones de un bar en la frontera, 2001; Las ciudades fantasmas, 2002; m.d.i.h., 2004; Heautontimoroumenos, 2005; Los Desmoronamientos Sinfónicos, 2006. Libros de narrativa: El Príncipe, 2004; El Paso, 2005 and Hotel Lima, 2006. His texts have been published in magazines in Peru and abroad such as: Hueso Húmero, Ajos & Zafiros, Pterodáctilo y Lucero. He collaborated with magazines like Imaginario del Arte, Sieteculebras, Flecha en el Azul and Distancia Crítica. He directed the virtual magazine El Malhechor Exhausto and co-directed Literatura Pelícano. In his essay Las ciudades fantasmas, Javier Agreda says: In the work of Miguel Ildefonso we can find fundamentally two subjects: the description of modern urban life and the reflection upon his own poetic work... Las ciudades fantasmas (The Ghost Cities) is a group of texts in which a narrator, the poetic self, confronted with urban life´s violence and “being a prisoner of the body”, decides to take refuge in poetry. Ildefonso tries to find the midpoint between opposites such as narrative and poetry, autobiographical and book-inspired, descriptive and reflexive, everyday speech and literary quotes..."


• BENJAMÍN CHÁVEZ was born in Bolivia February 17, 1971. Studied philosophy at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés de La Paz, and Anthropology at the Universidad Católica de Cochabamba. He has published the following poetry books: Prehistorias del androide, 1994; Con la misma tijera, 1999; Santo sin devoción, 2000; Y allá en lo alto un pedazo de cielo, 2003; Extramuros, 2004; Pequeña librería de viejo, 2007, National Poetry Prize. Editor of the literary magazine La Mariposa Mundial and the literary supplement El Duende. He has also produced short stories and his literary work is contained in various anthologies. He collaborates with newspapers and magazines from his country and abroad. He lives in La Paz.  Roberto Echavarren refers to Pequeña Librería de viejo, saying: “The poems of Benjamín Chávez are more a substraction than an addition. They highlight a deconstructive process that leaves few things (or at least few you can see) standing, but inserts us in a space that they segregate, a field of the most radical dispossession. “Lanuguage peels itself” Its minor tone is its greatest success. It opens a habitable space, where the echo reverberates in silent meditation “the weak music of soft things” (probably his deepest or best poem). In lonely retreat those humble companies let you hear their dull outcry, but it must be very silent to hear them. All the opposite of a show of shining images or rhetorical declarations, the voice of Chávez is thin but authentic and it gives us the secret of a tempered ear.


• JORGE GALÁN was born in El Salvador en 1971. Books Published: Tarde de Martes, (Tuesday Afternoon) 2004; El Día Interminable, (The neverending day) 2004; Una Primavera Muy Larga, (A very long Spring) 2006; Breve Historia del Alba, (Brief historia of Dawn) 2007 y La Habitación, (The room) 2007. He has received, among others, the Adonáis prize for Poetry, 2006 and the national poetry awards CONCULTURA, 1996, 1998, 1999. As stated by Francisco Andrés Escobar: “…Jorge Galán´s poetry must be read with citizen gratitud.  When the country sounds in the orchestra of nations, it does from the atrocious instrument of violence, it can not do less than thank who, amongst the screaming and fear, the fanaticisms and deceits, pulses his work as a poet, bringing international awards to his people, such as the Adonáis Prize, given to Jorge few months ago in Spain. (…) With a high capacity of seduction, it is a poetry that comes from a long study of the history, theory and technique of poetic expression. A poet is made by vocation and formation, as said by Lorca. In Galán, this is unavoidable. His talent - that came from God or Biology, or of God through Biology, however it may be- has an additional value: the untiring study of the instruments of the poetic art. The poetry of Jorge has depth and sonority. The first virtue comes to him from authentic feeling; the second, from his accurate handling of verse, in its different meters, and his control of the poetic procedure to raise, with words, effective images and metaphors... "


• FABRICIO ESTRADA was born in Sabanagrande, Francisco Morazán, Honduras, october 1974. Published poem books: Sextos de Lluvia, 1998; Poemas contra el miedo, 2001; Solares, 2004; and Imposible un ángel (antología), 2005. He was included in the following anthologies: Cien años de poesía política en Honduras, 2003 and La Herida del Sol, Contermporary CentralAmerican Poetry Anthology 2007. According to Roberto Sosa: “In Fabricio Estrada´s understanding of cosmos lies, better yet, blooms, the idea of joining aesthetic affinities that help in the dissolution of the official lie planted in philanthropic hypocrisy, taken to a happy ending by masked intellectuals strategically plugged into cultural and educational organisms.  For Fabricio Estrada the four horizons of social hope, at plain sight and patience, crumble one after the other, and the loud shout circulates, expanding by the flanks of the marketplace. “Man is born disperse and woman, compassionate, seeks to join him, she does what she can.” Beautiful and enigmatic verses by Fabricio Estrada, solar poet, who already seems firmly directed to his definite personal and poetic zenith."


• FRANCISCO RUIZ UDIELwas born in Estelí, Nicaragua in 1977. In 2005 he was awarded the First Internacional Ernesto Cardenal Prize for Young Poetry with his work “Alguien me ve llorar en un sueño" (Someone sees me cry in a dream). In 2005 he also published "Retrato de poeta con joven errante", poetry sample written by youths of the generation 2000-2005 or generation of uneasiness, as it was called by Gioconda Belli in the prologue of the event. Founder of the National Encounter for World-wide Poetry Day in Nicaragua. Founding member of the International Poetry Festival of Granada, Nicaragua. In June 2995 he was invited to Casa de América de Madrid, España, to participate in the V Festival "La poesía tiene la palabra". In 2006 he "Poetas, pequeños Dioses" (Poets, Small gods). At the moment he collaborates as a reporter for El Nuevo Diario and his is an editor in chief for “CARATULA”, Central American cultural magazine. Claribel Alegría said the poems in Alguien me ve llorar en un sueño, were “provocative, transparent and deep, they speak to us of loneliness, dreams, violence and death”. We find in his poems an influence such as Cesare Pavese, because of his anecdotal recurrence to transmit the real pain of his main character. We find before poetry with pavesian characteristics, but also surreal characteristics or as Jorge Boccanera says, a poetry "between an expansive orality that brushes the story with abundant nexuses of connection and descriptions, and the self-confidence of a lyricism that throws unusual visions there and here..."


• ALAN MILLS was born in Guatemala, 1979. Poet, essayist and translator (English and French). Poetry books: Los nombres ocultos, 2002; Marca de agua, 2005; Poemas sensibles, 2005; Síncopes, 2007; Testamentofuturo, 2007. He has participated in many festivals in Latin America and in the V  International Festival “La poesí­a tiene la palabra" organized by Casa de America in Madrid in 2005. In 2007 he was invited to various festivals in Peru, Brazil and México. Some of his poems have been translated to English, German and Italian. He edits several alternative projects (www.guatattack.com). He is the Director of the  Latin American Web magazine of poetry Rusticatio (www.rusticatio.com) and collaborates with diverse publications in Hispano-America. He has been a grantholder at the Ministry of Culture in Madrid. " Like the lighting of an amazing possibility, new great poetry is emerging in Latin America, the new great Literature, next to the renewed nightmares. If  we can still speak of a continent it is because those new poets exist, and they do as noone could have foretold. Alan Mills is one of those great new poets, and he demonstrates that these countries that are victims of everything are writing as if there was still a soul, as if still a body existed, as if still, in synthesis, there was the contingency of a soul looking for its body. "Síncopes" constitutes the extraordinary poem of a violation, a permanent violation and, simultaneously, one of the most ferocious and hallucinated samples of the great Latin American poetry of today ". (Raul Zurita).