33rd FIPMed -July 1 to 15, 2023-
Poetry on the road to peace
Peace, like freedom, is an impetuous and promising river that advances amidst the brilliance of humanity's poetry. Dream in movement. Life today is threatened by crises at all levels: the climatic emergency, war as a sign of a global crisis of economy and geopolitics, the crisis of peoples' hunger, the crisis of values that brings with it a crisis of freedom and, therefore, the greater risk of a large-scale war.
Liberation is the nourishing soil of song. Poetry resists and leaps over the debris of our time in which the threat to life becomes vertiginous, in the day to day, with humanity captive of its fears and struggling to keep hope active, full of light.
The sacred fire of peace will stoke the bonfire of coexistence, it must maintain its glow. It is urgent to protect this fire in order to breathe the oxygen of renewal, in the perspective of coexistence and overcoming all confrontations that have damaged the community to the point of fragmentation and fratricide.
From war and its damages, language is at risk of being turned into an empty specter that transmits and executes the orders of violence and death. This violence comes with many masks and the vitality of language, of words, of symbols, is exposed to violation in a world marked by war.
It is urgent need for peace and freedom: they are invoked because it is necessary to consolidate them on a planetary level. We feel that peace and freedom are moving away, they feel more and more confiscated, as the devastating forces of the planet intensify, which impose themselves destroying in their path the living and establish the hard law of subjugation of the peoples.
Life in subjugation
Peace that is violated, or at high risk, is life in subjugation, the absence of freedom at the current planetary crossroads. The food crisis is catastrophic and hunger is subjugation, loss of peace and of all freedom.
We experience the paradox of our time which consists in the fact that, having all the resources to turn around the vector of destruction that affects the peace of the planet, the action of the world powers to which the construction of peace is subject is not effective.
Our human nature is conflictive in its essence, conflicts will be a constant but for their solution we have all the powers that allow us to solve them without the recourse to war and its nefarious capacity to destroy everything living on the face of the earth.
A poem will not solve the crisis of peace and freedom, but a poem is the conductor of the libertarian spirit that must be kept alive, like a foundational and lustral fire that spreads in every being and nourishes life.
Peace, like poetry, demands to be built by all; like freedom, it is an eminently collective experience, which implies the urgent need for the sprouting of the great poetry of humanity, in which the creative action of poets is essential to give vigor to that sensitivity and legacy that will return the captive light to the soul of the peoples.
The actions of the legions of poetry are urgent, in the face of the complex panorama of the world adrift from the fluctuations of the various crises, which have world peace in suspense. Poetry understood as the energy, the magnetic field that propitiates the conjunction of creative actions, that allow to endow life with a new meaning, that propitiate the access to new forms of interrelation, sustained in a language liberated from violence, that still remains in the world, and in the language that determines the action of the communities.
The main thing is the cessation of the planetary war of the nations in conflict and local, of the peoples; the essential thing: to heal the collective soul. Healing the language, cleaning the bridges of words that unite us to renew social and cultural life.
In the face of times of political violence and fratricidal war, poetry manifests itself as a source of sensitivity that frees us from the oppressive phraseologies of the present and gives way to new symbols, charged with the vitality, the splendor of the foundational. And what is most urgent is the foundation of a world freed from the destruction to which it is doomed.
It is the invocation and practice of peace that will illuminate our history, which has been submerged in the darkness of slaughter. That flame has been alive and expanding thanks to all those who fight for the recovery of what has been usurped from a whole legion of humans who have suffered, in a direct way, the affronts of war.
The song of the memorial light of poetry will be heard, will be written, will be read and sung by all as a sovereign gesture of justice on the way to the integration of a history that has been mutilated, biased by the victimizers of the fratricidal war.
We invoke the symbolic efficacy of all actions that make it possible to accompany those affected by the violence of war; interventions that make possible, in areas marked by violent actions, new symbols freed from violence, new interrelationships and new forms of interpersonal rapprochement and coexistence.
Actions of life in peaceful coexistence are the days of poetry, which are convened as a form of union, of cohesion that fortifies every change, every dawn in birth, that illuminates the skies of peaceful life, so urgent, so necessary in these times of transition to a more amiable role of social life, provided that all adverse forces yield, leave behind their obstinate evolution of usury, slaughter and desolation.
33rd Medellín International Poetry Festival
It is urgent the mobilization of poets, artists, thinkers, students, children, young people and all human groups committed to the construction of a new atmosphere, of a sensibility at the height of the sovereign design of the preservation of life, light and the joy of existence on the prodigious planetary abode.
In this perspective, from July 1 to 15, 2023, the 33rd International Poetry Festival of Medellin -33rd FIPMed- will intervene in the city and the world, virtually (July 1 to 7) and in person (July 8 to 15), as a way to contribute to the construction of peace in Colombia, and the world, through the formative processes, prior, during and after this event of global scope, whose contents are aimed at a multitudinous public that will strengthen its sensitivity around the axes: Construction of a culture of peace, Poetic pedagogy for the triumph of life and Colombia made visible at a planetary level.
According to what has been expressed in this call to the local and world community, all the Festival's events, since its inception, have been guided by the purpose of reaching the promising port of peace, where it will be possible to make significant contributions to consolidate the urgent changes that promote the rise and cultural renewal of the communities that have been victims of the fratricidal war. Thus, 80 events will take place to turn the city into a nurturing ground for coexistence and community cohesion. Ninety poets from the five continents will take part, who will be the messengers of a new sensibility for peace and the preservation of the libertarian spirit so necessary in these times subjected to many coercions.
In the theme of Poetic Pedagogy for the triumph of life, the Festival will intervene with the realization of the twenty-seventh International Poetry School of Medellin in which courses, conferences, workshops and panels will be held, activities whose contents will strengthen the sensitivity around the construction of peace and that will be convened at the appropriate time.
First Congress of the World Poetry Movement (WPM)
In the line of action of globalization of poetry by which we nurture the formation of the World Poetry Movement, during the celebration of the 21st International Poetry Festival of Medellin, the 1st Congress of WPM will be held in Medellin and Caracas during the international poetry festivals.
The poetic action that will give a significant sense to the presence of Colombia on the planet, as epicenter of the globalization of poetic actions that build world peace, will be the First Congress of the World Poetry Movement (WPM), www.worldpoetrymovement.org, to be held in Medellin between July 13 and 15, with a second stage in Caracas between 17 and 20 of the same month, both in person and virtually.
According to the December 2022 report of the coordinating committee to the first congress of the World Poetry Movement (WPM), the congress will be held so that WPM "will be in a position to trigger a deeper action through multiple initiatives of poets in different regions of the world, giving a more impacting dimension to the relationship of poets and poetry with human society".
Poets and guests:
Africa: Ahmed Omar Zaabar (Tunisia), Mohamed Achaari (Morocco).
The African poets who were delegated by WPM Africa Virtual Congress, to the 1st WPM Congress are: Achour Fenni (Algeria), Ashraf Aboul-Yazid (Egypt), Ayo Ayoola-Amale (Ghana), Etenat Awol (Ethiopia, virtual), Ismaël Diadié Haïdara (Mali), Khalid Raissouni (Morocco), Mpesse Géraldin (Cameroon), Nimrod Bena (Chad), Oumar Farouk Sesay (Sierra Leone), Paul Liam (Nigeria, virtual),Recaredo Silebo Boturu (Equatorial Guinea, virtual), Saley Boubé Bali (Niger), Siphiwe Nzima (Lesotho), Tarek Eltayeb (Sudan), Vera Duarte Pina (Cape Verde, virtual), Zolani Mkiva (South Africa).
America: Ángela Mavisoy (Kamëntsa Nation, Colombia), Andrés Uribe (Colombia), Bárbara Lins (Colombia), Carlos Satizábal (Colombia), Carolina Cárdenas (Colombia), Carolyn Forché (United States), Damaris Román (Colombia), Diego Andrés Martínez Rúa (Colombia), Edwin Madrid (Ecuador, virtual), Felipe López (Colombia), Horacio Benavides (Colombia, virtual), Hubert Matiúwaà (Mè'phàà Nation, Mexico), Johana Casanova (Colombia), Jorge Torres Medina (Colombia), Jotamario Arbeláez (Colombia), Karla Jazmín Arango (Colombia), Katherine Wiedemann (Colombia), Leonardo Ruiz (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela), Liliana Marentes (Colombia), Luz Helena Cordero (Colombia), Luz Mary Giraldo (Colombia), María Casiraghi (Argentina, virtual), Mario Meléndez (Chile, virtual), Mauricio Redolés (Chile), Pedro Arturo Estrada (Colombia), Pedro Ruiz (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela), Rom Freschi (Argentina), Sebastián Tobón (Colombia), Takuri Ignacio Tricot Reyes (Chile), Tallulah Flores (Colombia), Vielsi Arias (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela), Viviana Restrepo (Colombia).
The delegates from the Americas were selected at their congress, which was held on April 22 and 23, and are: Alex Pausides (Cuba), Alexandra Cretté (French Guyana), Ana María Oviedo Palomares (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela), Enrique Sánchez Hernani (Peru), Fernando Rendón (Colombia), Freddy Ñáñez (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela), Karel Leyva (Cuba), Maribel Mora Curriao (Mapuche Nation, Chile), Melissa Merlo (Honduras), Mónica Laneri (Paraguay), Mónica Lucía Suárez (Colombia), Nicolás Antonioli (Argentina), Nicole Cage-Florentiny (Martinique), Oscar Saavedra Villarroel (Chile), Rosa Chávez (Maya Nation, Guatemala), Yvonne Weekes (Montserrate).
Asia: Ali Almaazmi (United Arab Emirates), Ashraf Fayadh (Palestine), Liu Xunfu (People's Republic of China, virtual), Mei Er (People's Republic of China), Zahir Al-Ghafri (Sultanate of Oman).
The Asian delegates to the WPM Congress are: Adel Khozam (United Arab Emirates, virtual), Ali Al Ameri (Jordan/Palestine), Altynai Temirova (Kyrgyzstan), Hanan Awwad (Palestine), Imdad Aakash (Pakistan), Keshab Sigdel (Nepal), Khosiyat Rustamova (Uzbekistan, virtual), Rati Saxena (India), Saleh Zamanan (Saudi Arabia), Shirani Rajapakse (Sri Lanka), Shivani Sivagurunathan (Malaysia), Sue Zhu (People's Republic of China), Vadim Terekhin (Russia).
Europe: Janette Ayachi (United Kingdom), Koukis Christos (Greece), Nuno Júdice (Portugal, virtual), Sanja Baković (Croatia), Sylvie Marie (Belgium), Valerio Magrelli (Italy, virtual).
The delegates from Europe to the Congress are: Agneta Falk (Sweden), Alexis Bernaut (France), Anna Lombardo (Italy), Ataol Behramoglu (Türkiye, virtual), Barbara Pogacnik (Slovenia), Claus Ankersen (Denmark), Francis Combes (France), Gerry Loose (Scotland), Luís Filipe Sarmento (Portugal), Luis Luna (Spain), Neşe Yaşın (Cyprus), Nigar Hasan Zadeh (Azerbaijan), Nurduran Duman (Türkiye), Sandor Halmosi (Hungary), Sonja Manojlovic (Croatia), Sotirios Pastakas (Greece, virtual).
This is our most fraternal and warm invitation to be a dynamic part of the transforming actions of poetry, in the context of the 33rd International Poetry Festival of Medellin, which will raise the voices of poets of the world for peace and the preservation of planetary life.
June 6, 2023.
