Announcement of the Seventh Poetry Festival of Granada
ViaNica.com | Nov 24, 2010
The seventh edition of the International Poetry Festival of Granada will be held next year - in this colonial city - from Sunday, February 13 to 19, according to its organizers. One hundred and fifty poets from 58 countries of the world will participate, and the event will include various activities, such as concerts, workshops, a literary fair and a massive poetic carnival.
The slogan of the festival will be "Poetry is the kingdom of imagination and the happiest painful testimony of the human being on Earth," said Francisco de Asís Fernández, president of the activity, during a press conference given yesterday, November 23, in Managua.
It was also announced that the festival will be dedicated to the Nicaraguan poet Claribel Alegría (Estelí, 1924), who was present during the conference. "Claribel is a woman with a heart of lily, cherub soul and heavenly language," said the national writer Gioconda Belli, paraphrasing the famous Ruben Darío. Belli also explained the importance of Claribel's work, who has published 20 books and won a great number of prizes and international acknowledgements.
Simple, straightforward and related to senses, the voice of Claribel is so hers that we called it "clarilegro", said Gioconda. She also declared that the poet achieves the hard work of marrying shapes with content. "No wonder why she has been accompanied in her career by authors such as Mario Benedetti, Julio Cortazar and Jose Coronel Urtecho", Belli stated.
In addition to the private encounters between the poets, concerts and recitals for attendees (in and out of the city), there are also two important activities of the festival: the Books Fair and the Poetic Carnival. The first one will sell books from authors and editorials from all over the world, and the second will gather 150 dancers that will represent the Nicaraguan folkloric dances with a tour around the center of Granada.
During the conference, the regional ambassador of the European Union, Mendel Goldstein, explained that the organism has decided to increase the financial support to next year's event. Antonio Pérez-Hernández, ambassador of Spain, also commented they were pleased to support the festival, which for him is a cultural reference in Central America, Latin America and the world.
Organizers stated that the main goals of the festival since it was created were: international cultural exchange, worldwide promotion of the Nicaraguan poetry and the application for the city of Granada to be named a world heritage.
The president of the festival assured that, taking into account the previous editions, the event has had the participation of 576 poets of 82 countries, 342 Nicaraguan poets and 120 thousand attendees. Next year's festival will have a day dedicated to the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast, another one to youth and one afternoon dedicated to women, during which organizers will unveil a sculpture of Claribel Alegría.
The International Festival of Granada was born in 2005, as a successful initiative of the civil society. It has been accumulating support from different fields and an important worldwide promotion. We will publish the program of activities in the next months on our Events Calendar.