Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín (Colombia)
"for showing how
creativity, beauty, free expression and community can flourish amongst and
overcome even deeply entrenched fear and violence."
The
International Poetry Festival of Medellín is one of the largest and most
prestigious poetry festivals in the world. It started in 1991, when Medellín
was one of the most dangerous and violent cities in the world. Through poetry
readings in the streets, people have reclaimed their city.
The Idea: Poetry Against Terror
The
International Poetry Festival of Medellín started as a protest against the
political violence and hatred prevailing in Colombia and especially in
Medellín. In the early 1990s, Medellín was ruled by fear, political terror and
fighting between criminal groups. Some 100 people could be murdered on a
weekend. After 8 p.m., the city was usually dead due to a curfew imposed by the
paramilitary, nowadays still active in the country.
Initiator Fernando Rendón
says: "It seems a difficult task to find flourishing and tranquil decades
in our country in the last 150 years, but the decade of the nineties was
particularly sombre and mournful. [...] The festival arose from a proposal to
overthrow the wall of terror and fear imposed by the internal feuds of our
country". It was an attempt "to create through poetry an atmosphere
that without ignoring the spiral of death and the inertial strength of hate
could put a little light in this sombre scene."
The
idea was simple: By organising poetry readings in the streets, the Festival
initiators helped people to re-establish a cultural life and reclaim their
city. More and more listeners overcame their own fear and attended the poetry
readings.
During the 10 days of the annual Festival in Medellín, there are public
readings of poetry in the streets, in parks, residential areas, at the
university and libraries, in theatres, cooperatives, schools and cultural
centres, restaurants, malls, subway stations, factories, churches and even in
prisons. Each year, some 70 poets from up to 55 countries participate actively
in the festival. Up to 200,000 people come to listen to the 100 poetry
readings.
The
Festival has brought much positive international attention to Medellín, and it
has invited many foreign poets: Until 2008, 843 poets from 143 countries have
read their poems in more than 60 languages and dialects during 1106 public
readings in 33 Colombian cities. In 2012, the numbers of poets who have read at
the Festival had grown to 1200 from 160 countries.
History
and Organisers
The
International Poetry Festival of Medellín was organised for the first time in
1991 by thirteen people connected with the literature magazine Prometeo, which
was founded in 1982 and has published 83 issues, 14 books of poetry and a CD
ROM with poems and biographies of 216 poets from 113 countries. The main
inspiration came from the editors of Prometeo, the poets Fernando Rendón and
Angela Garcia.
Rendón
was born in 1951 in Medellín. He worked as poet, editor and journalist and was
the founder of Prometeo. The organisation responsible for both Prometeo and the
Festival is the Corporation of Art and Poetry Prometeo.
Further
Activities and Outreach Programmes
In
addition to the Festival and magazine Prometeo, the Corporation of Art and
Poetry Prometeo has projects which include a TV documentary series entitled
Tiempo de Poesia, an International Poetry School and the Gulliver project,
poetry workshops for children in the poor neighbourhoods of Medellín. From
2005-08, the Corporation of Art and Poetry Prometeo offered through the Poetry School 57
free courses for 400 annual students, 53 conferences, workshops and talks; carried out 16 annual workshops of
poetry appreciation under its Gulliver project, reaching annually out for 400
children from 6-11 years from the poor districts of Medellín; created cooperated actions of Latin
American Poetry festivals, with Festivals from Venezuela, Cuba, Puerto Rico
and, soon, Costa Rica, San Salvador, Nicaragua and Argentina.
The Corporation
of Art and Poetry Prometeo has also helped to strengthen many of these, and to
create the Itinerant Poetry Festival of Africa; edited in Spanish and English the Colombian poetry web page of Poetry
International of Rotterdam, in which 63 Colombian poets have already been
included; and an unique worldwide poetry
anthology on the internet
(which in 2013 had grown to 716 videos in 72 languages and subtitles in
Spanish, with poems by 692 poets from 157 countries and 28 Indian nations); summoned the International Poetry
Prize for books published in Spanish, the Latin American Poetry Prize of the
City of Medellín, the National Prize of Stimulus to the Young Colombian Poetry
and the Gaceta Award together with the Cuban magazine Gazeta.
Campaigning
for Democracy
In
2003, the Festival brought together the first Global Conference on Poetry for
Peace in Colombia, which passed a declaration about the political situation in
Colombia.
The
Corporation of Art and Poetry Prometeo has also campaigned for the
democratisation of the country by disseminating a letter signed by 188 poets
and writers, 282 artists and hundreds of other Colombian professionals, and 138
poets from 82 countries. In 2013, they helped develop a Global Campaign for
Peace in Colombia, in cooperation with the World
Poetry Movement which
had been set up in Medellín, Colombia, in July 2011 and which includes the
participation of nearly 230 organizations and 1240 poets from 134 nations from
all continents.
The
Poetry Festival has also participated in the Committee of National Meeting of
Artists and Intellectuals "to promote a process of unity of action between
Colombian poets, artists and intellectuals in the struggle for freedom of
creation, expression and mobilisation, and for the full democratisation of our
authoritarian and intolerant country."
The
Poetry Festival has been facing death threats, attacks on its office and its
homepage and has to deal with a reduction of the Colombian state's economical
support, nevertheless it has managed to keep its activities ongoing, supported
by different donors, for instance the culture secretary of the mayor's office
of Medellín, Dutch Hivos and DOEN and the Governments of Switzerland and
Germany. However, in 2013 the Festival reported also lower financial
contributions from Europe.
It
received the Comendador Order by the Congress of Colombia in 2008. In March
2009, after two years tiresome court case, the Constitutional Court of Colombia
declared the International Poetry Festival of Medellín as cultural heritage of
the nation.
Quotes:
Fernando
Rendón: "The Festival has the conviction that culture must and has to play
a fundamental role in any process of development. It has the certainty that
arts and poetry will contribute decisively to the up-surging of a new humanity,
a new human society."
"The
International Poetry Festival of Medellín has maintained and will maintain its
efforts, as a way of opposition to barbarism and of looking into alternative
routes of democratic and peaceful resistance to the extreme violence that
strikes our country, seeking the strengthening and defence of the fundamental
rights of the Colombian people: the right to live, the right to have liberty of
expression, the right of meeting and the right to create."
The
motto of the Festival is "Por una paz más activa que todas las
guerras." ... "For a peace which is more active than all wars."
(Last
update: February 2013) Article source:
~Day Five~
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