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At the literary translation conference, I heard a story about the Medellin Poetry Festival, which attracts thousands of people every year and fills soccer stadiums for its most popular poets. The story has many characteristics of urban legend, but I'll repeat it anyway.
The story was told to me by John Oliver Simon, who attended the festival in 1996. According to what he was told, the year before at the 1995 festival, a group of poets was walking around the town when a van pulled up, some guys with machine guns jumped out, forced the poets into the van, and drove off. At this point in the story, everyone listening thinks of news they've heard of the cartels in Colombia and of kidnappings.... The kidnapped poets ended up in an apartment, where their captors explained that because they were so notorious, and living undercover, they couldn't go to the poetry readings - so could the poets perform for them in the apartment? One of the poets was the Peruvian writer Blanca Varela, who said she'd be happy to oblige, but unfortunately she didn't have anything memorized and didn't have her books with her. "That's okay," responded the FARC guerillas, or drug lords, or whoever they were. "We have all your books right here." He disappeared into the next room and came back with an armload of poetry. The poets read and declaimed and were returned to the festival that same day.
A good story! Does it matter if we believe it or not?
Don't miss the Call to the young poets of the world from Medellin!
We appeal to you to poetize public spaces in the big and small cities of the world. This will be our massive and loving manner of communication with “the othersâ€, who are also us.
Claroscuro, a literary group in Peru, has a Blanca Varela poetry blog. I hope Varela doesn't mind. After all, she read poetry to outlaws - so why not to cyberpirates? You can find a small selection of her work, too, on Palabra Virtual. Thanks to MaryCarmen Ponce, Eberth Munárriz, Lucian-Ácleman and Fabricio Rebatta for their complex of interrelated poetry blogs. (And congratulations to Varela on winning the Premio Internacional de PoesÃa Ciudad de Granada Federico GarcÃa Lorca!)
Contributing Editor Liz Henry also blogs at Composite and Badgermama.
