Medellin Poetry Festival greets award

Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa
Published: Thursday September 28, 2006

Bogota- For a poetry initiative in the one-time violence- plagued Colombian drug capital of Medellin, Thursday's award of an Alternative Nobel Prize gave global recognition to the search for peace in their region, the recipients said. The International Poetry Festival of Medellin in Colombia earlier Thursday received a 2006 Right Livelihood Award, a monetary prize created in 1980 by Swedish-German philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull to reward outstanding work in the defence of peace, human rights and the environment as well as the fight against poverty and social inequality.

The awards were announced in Stockholm.

The poetry festival was created in 1991 by members of the Colombian literary magazine Prometeo as a cultural answer to the ruthless violence that Medellin suffered in the 1980s and 1990s at the hands of powerful drug cartels, when drug boss Pablo Escobar and hired killers dominated urban life with their weapons.

"(The award) is a recognition by the international community to poets who have contributed with determination and solidarity to defend life in Colombia," the poet and festival director Fernando Rendon told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "It is a recognition to all the people who have died or have survived armed conflict searching for peace in Colombia."

Throughout the years, the organizers staged public poetry readings to break a 6 pm curfew imposed by the paramilitary, and thereby reclaim the streets. Now readings are held in parks, churches, prisons and factories during the 10-day festival that has spread in the region.

Since it began, Medellin - Colombia's second city and capital of the northwestern region of Antioquia - has hosted more than 750 poets from 131 countries, including Nigerian Nobel Prize for Literature winner Wole Soyinka.

Poems in over 60 languages have been read in various public spaces in the city.

"Medellin youth no longer have as their paradigm the sicario (hired killer). This event means a purification of the spirit of the city. Medellin went from being the world capital of the illegal drug trade to the world capital of poetry," Rendon said.

The jury of the Alternative Nobel Prize said the International Poetry Festival in Medellin showed "how creativity, beauty, free expression and community can flourish amongst and overcome even deeply entrenched fear and violence."

Von Uexkull said on Thursday that the Medellin festival is an example of "what the arts can do to stop violence."

The Right Livelihood awards are to be formally presented at a ceremony in the Swedish parliament on December 8. Indian social activist Ruth Manorama, US "whistle blower" Daniel Ellsberg and the poetry festival shared the prize worth 2 million Swedish kronor (273,000 dollars).

The Brazilian Francisco "Chico" Whitaker Ferreira, who helped found the World Social Forum, was named recipient of the Right Livelihood Honorary Award, a non-cash prize.

© 2006 DPA - Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa