XX INTERNATIONAL POETRY
FESTIVAL OF MEDELLIN
July 8 to 17th, 2010.

The International Poetry Festival of Medellín
Contemporary Hierophany

By Jairo Guzmán
Translation by Nicolás Suescún

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

Alternative Anthem

From Neil Astley on Vimeo

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

A Close Reading of Cesar Ruiz
Aquino's "Word Without End"

By Ralph Semino Galan

WORD WITHOUT END

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

An Interview with Bob Holman

By Dan Brodnitz
From Sharg newspaper

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

The Defiant of Poetry my Term

By Quamruzzaman

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

Alias

Twenty Years of a Historic
Poetic Project for the World

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

Imtiaz Dharker- A Study in Prescriptive
Social and Religious Sanctions

From Neil Astley on Vimeo

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

The Poet As Sculptor and
Other Thoughts On Writing Poetry

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

Poetry Is Painting with Words

Gasham Najafzadeh’s truth

By Shemsi Vefadar
From Sharg newspaper

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.   READ MORE

Blake

By T.S. Eliot

        I

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