The Poetry Festival of Medellín does not sympathize with war

The Poetry Festival of Medellín
does not sympathize with war

By Fernando Rendón
Director International Poetry Festival of Medellin

No, the Poetry Festival of Medellín, Alternative Nobel Prize of 2006, does not sympathize with weapons nor war. Nor are the poets who come to Medellín “large masks of prow for international terrorism”. The Poetry Festival of Medellín does not sympathize with kidnapping, nor with gas pipettes thrown like a death lottery over the civil population. The Festival doesnt sympathize with the state's terrorism either, nor with paramilitary brutality, nor with the unavoidable massacres, disappearances, political genocide or the systematic elimination or stigmatisation of leaders or militants of the opposition.

The Poetry Festival of Medellín is not under surveillance of the CPI like others, sympathizing with the horizon of the realization of the dream of poetic justice in this country and the world, that is to say, with the achievement of peace, beauty, truth, dignity of existence, and with something not promoted by the media, religious institutions, or the leading class: fulfilled social justice.

The Festival isn't reflected in the petty comments and gossip of an imposter - neither frightful nor sagacious- who is not nephew of Borges, and that has earned a seat of honor in the Colombian history of infamy. It is obvious that in a waring, militarized country, that spends most of its budget on the external debt and on war, those of us who love peace are object of persecution and lies.

The dirty war that our country has lived is spread this way into the world of poetry.

The Festival is inspiration and hope for the future human, through its transforming and uniting energy, joining Colombian society through poetic language. It urges and reconstructs, in all, the adventure of fullness. It is a poetic celebration without parallel in the world, a pacific and creative answer to cruelty, injustice and barbarism, unpunished in our time. More than 900 poets of almost 150 countries of the world have given support to the struggle of this mother country, for life in Colombia. Instead of wars and violence, a total peace; instead of selfishness, understanding. It is the creative language that recreates the will of the future.

Medellin, August 2008.