The International Poetry Festival of Medellín is evidently an essential act that delves deeply into the human soul, that exalts the celebratory condition of being and inscribes it in the context of the exercise of freedom, from the power of poetry. Its light has a bearing on conscience, on the perception of the public for whom the spirit prospers, resisting the affronts of a reality overwhelmed by violence and degradation. On the level of its dreams, the Festival is visualized as ceremonial center in which poetry becomes a channel connecting us with the sacred, with the emancipating forces of being, with its purest root in poetry, for life and for the transformation of the inner world of those who fall under its influence. READ MORE
John Agard: Playwright, poet, short-story and children's writer John Agard was born on 21 June 1949 in British Guiana (now Guyana). He worked for the Guyana Sunday Chronicle newspaper as sub-editor and feature writer before moving to England in 1977, where he became a touring lecturer for the Commonwealth Institute, travelling to schools throughout the UK to promote a better understanding of Caribbean culture. In 1993 he was appointed Writer in Residence at the South Bank Centre, London, and became Poet in Residence at the BBC in London, an appointment created as part of a scheme run by the Poetry Society in London. READ MORE
East, the horizons and all the learning
Lost. Sick for Siquijor or Avalon
O I could for the sheer sight of her throw
Verses away! Let the Virgins carry
Virgule widdershins upon the fairy
Earth, the same that on the world's first morning
Left her traces, her face an eidolon
Of whiteness for the chilled blood to know
Or for one word and one word only go
Void as days all misspent for the starry
Echo of a night come without warning
Like a thousand thieves stealing on and on READ MORE
Poet, teacher, and impresario Bob Holman talks about riding along on the tip of an eyelash, the importance of orality, and how performing is editing.
Are there any habits or tactics that you use to help feed your creativity?
I'm a poet, I guess, because the tempo of a poem fits into my life. If I had a different kind of discipline, I'm sure I would write infinitely long novels. Poems ride along on the tip of your eyelash and can come and go in a blink. It's important that you be there when they want to happen. READ MORE
Many times, at alone, I was struck by the poser- what is poetry? To me, this is a baffling figure on a jigsawpuzzle that I have to match on my own. And Yes, I did it- not in this world! Recently I've got it again, very personally, in a close tete-a.-tete deal, then I was tolled- You can not write poem, but build it! Here comes the question- how does poem build? To answer the question, I've to say- I don't know. But how is poetry getting done? Many bodies tell that poetry is a form of illusion. READ MORE
Medellín in the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century: Twenty years of complex events in a city among many of the cities of the world that have suffered extreme violence. Twenty years ago, in the then called capital of world crime and drug trafficking, it was the time of the war between the drug baron Pablo Escobar and the Colombian State, of genocide and assassinations of political leaders, of the growth of criminal bands in the tenements of the city and their will to take possession of it block by block. Bombs and car bombs exploded everywhere and everyday. READ MORE
By Prof. R.K. Bhushan
From www.liberiaseabreeze.com
Imtiaz Dharker (1954-) lives with the passion of an undaunted rebel, not to retreat and not to fail. The intensity and eloquence of her life and poetic accomplishment have dumbfounded the male-chauvinists and have left her female counterparts in soaring spirits not only inside the Islamic social, cultural and religious setup but also outside it. That is why her life and poetry make a fascinating study in the crushing indictment of the suppressive prescriptions against the freedom, dignity and respectful living of women, especially in the Muslim society. Imtiaz confirms our convictions that socio-cultural and socio-religious restrictions on women have robbed them of all their potentialities leaving them not only physically and mentally handicapped but also psychological wrecks age after age. READ MORE
By Althea Romeo-Mark
From www.liberiaseabreeze.com
I have learned from attending writers’ workshops over the years that a poet is a sculptor. Some of the best teachers I have had include Maya Angelou, Allan Ginsberg, and Jerome Judson. They taught me that a freshly composed poem is like a block of marble or a large piece of wood that must be chiseled and carved until it reaches a shape of perfection that pleases the eye. Similarly with a raw poem, you chisel away excess words until you reach a form that is concise, concrete, and conveys meaning in brief, vivid phrases that evoke a response in the reader. READ MORE
I saw alive time standing in front of me in Gasham Najafzadeh’s poems. Inside, life of a minute, inner meaning is very long, wide in this section of time.
Poetry is the product of a moment. Both love and poem come into life in a moment. “When we love, we love in a moment”. I saw moments of life distributed about, taut nerves of man in Gasham Najafzadeh’s poems. A passed love has remained very alive, fresh place of date is still popping out. It is still raining. Your tear drops are still larger than pupil of your eye.
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IF one follow Blake's mind through the several stages of his poetic development it is impossible to regard him as a naïf, a wild man, a wild pet for the supercultivated. The strangeness is evaporated, the peculiarity is seen to be the peculiarity of all great poetry: something which is found (not everywhere) in Homer and Æschylus and Dante and Villon, and profound and concealed in the work of Shakespeare—and also in another form in Montaigne and in Spinoza. It is merely a peculiar honesty, which, in a world too frightened to be honest, is peculiarly terrifying. It is an honesty against which the whole world conspires, because it is unpleasant. Blake's poetry has the unpleasantness of great poetry. READ MORE
Youth of delight! come hither
And see the opening morn,
Image of truth new-born.
Doubt is fled, and clouds of reason,
Dark disputes and artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze;
Tangled roots perplex her ways;
How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead;
And feel -- they know not what but care;
And wish to lead others, when they should be led.
When the human spirit is beset by the crossfire of death, poetry revives it. Since the dawn of humanity poetry congregated, celebrated life, initiated in the mysteries, and sweetly passed on knowledge. It was thus humans discovered the powers of the spirit, their creative capacity and the transforming potency of language. READ MORE
Seamus Heaney published his earliest poems under the pseudonym “Incertus”, meaning “uncertain”. Perhaps his reticence was understandable. As every schoolchild now knows, Heaney grew up on a farm where what counted was your skill with a spade or a plough – not a pen. READ MORE
"What a set! What a world!" Matthew Arnold exclaimed after reading an account of Shelley's private life. What would he have said of the private life of Robert Graves and Laura Riding as described by Graves's nephew Richard? READ MORE
For quite a while now, those who knew Czeslaw Milosz couldn't help wondering what it was going to be like when he was gone. In the meantime, he more than held his own, writing away for all he was worth in Krakow, in his early 90s, in a flat where I'd had the privilege of visiting him twice. READ MORE
The Constitutional Court of Colombia in a recent ruling declared executable the Law of the Congress of the Republic declaring the International Poetry Festival of Medellín a Cultural Heritage of the Nation.
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We present the audiovisual memory of participation from invited poets to the International Poetry Festival of Medellin. This anthology is composed for 343 poets from 133 countries of five continents. VIDEOS
The International Poetry Festival of Medellín actively
spreads Colombian poetry in the world. Since 2002,
Prometeo
has developed the Colombian section of Poetry
International of The Netherlands, with information and
poems in Spanish (translated into English) of 61 Colombian poets, including three new poets
every quarter.