Medellin will host its 21st International Poetry Festival from July 2-9, the theme of which will be a tribute to the original African spirit.
This year’s festival, titled “Reunion of the antelope and the star,” will celebrate the theme by inviting African poets, musicians and specialists to present music and poetry from the African continent, and will be hosted by the Art and Promising Poetry Corporation, in conjunction with the Poetry Africa project directed by Peter Rorvik in Durban, South Africa, reported the event’s website.
Among those invited to the festival are traditional South African singer Madosina, Mozambican singer Tania Tome and South African poet and singer Chiwoniso Maraire.
The festival was first founded in 1991, while Colombia was still caught amid a full-blown armed struggle, to express the importance of poetry as a tool to restore the country’s social fabric and to provide alternative conceptions of human life.
The corporation is a Colombian non-profit organization that belongs to the independent cultural sector, which “centers its efforts (…) in the creation, the investigation and the expansion of poetry, as a compliment to actions for the constant transformation of the conscience.”
The festival’s inauguration ceremony will take place at 4:30PM on July 2, at the Carlos Vieco open air theater on Cerro Nutibarra.