An interview with Fernando Rendón

September 01, 2006 Fernando Rendón — I have met some of the writers, poets and critics you mention who have also said that in their countries poetry doesn’t matter. Originally, poetry was by all and for all. The poet was anonymous and the poem, like The Iliad, was passed from generation to generation, and it was stored in the collective memory. To say that poetry is not for the masses is like saying that freedom, life and love are not for the people. "Poetry must be made by all," wrote Isidore Ducasse. 

The manner in which the masses make poetry is to celebrate it and transform history, and in this way they strengthen the confidence of poets. In this way, the oral tradition is recovered and engraved in the genetic memory of the world, complementing the reading and reflection of books of poetry. In a time such as we are experiencing in Colombia, a time of dirty war, of intolerance and great restriction of political freedom and civil rights, poetry summons multitudes, and strengthens freedom of assembly and of expression. It contributes to the union of the people in the desire and the search for freedom, and for a higher spiritual life; they come together in their active aspirations to truth, dignity and beauty. There are those who think that poetry resides only in books, because they accept that the power of knowledge remain in the minds of the few. 

I have been to poetry readings in Paris where fifty people have attended; they were very successful. But the masses (made up of ever more thinking individuals) did not feel welcome. In Medellín, we hand out 80,000 festival programs to the public. We invite the people and these individuals who make up the people, are transformed by the poetry readings (who can deny it?), by the contact with many of the greatest poets of our time who read out their poems without fear of the masses.

D.S.— After sixteen years of organizing a festival that gathers multiple literary traditions and the same number of languages, what do you think about the Italian adage traduttore-traditore [ed. translation betrays], compared with the sentence of Charles Simic according to whom “what survives translation is poetry”?

F.R.— What Simic says is true, in relative terms, and it seems to gather strength as we become aware of the mistranslations we end up with. But it is quite a negative assertion because there is no doubt that poets can translate other poets. There are great translations of poetry collecitons. The atmosphere of the most fundamental poems of all time has been deciphered and conveyed. We have really been able to breathe the Chaldean Oracles, the Babylonian Hymns, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

D.S. As director of the International Poetry Festival of Medellín and as a poet invited to similar events around the world, what do you think the impact of these events on society is?

F.R.— I don’t know what the impact of similar events is in societies different from ours. In some European countries, poetry doesn’t seem to move anyone. But I know that the Iraqis have a massive poetry festival, very traditional in the Arab world. But in general, we believe that the Colombian experience is unique. Last year, for example, we held four completely packed readings in Bogotá and had to turn people away. There are poetry festivals with an annual audience of four hundred. We, who have suffered a war of several decades, with thousands of dead still waiting for a final act of justice, belive that the International Poetry Festival of Medellín is not just an annual encounter with poets that includes ninety poetry readings and talks, but an active part of a cultural and spiritual process, through which our young people express their love of the poetic experience and their right to a splendid life, to freedom and a friendly and clean environment.

D.S.— The opportunity afforded by the Festival to get to know contemporary world poetry necessarily implies your being exposed to certain influences which might affect your own poetry. Which poets that have participated in the festival in all these years have been fundamental to your own work?

F.R. I've found the attitudes and thoughts of some of the guest poets who have nurtured my daily work and my will to develop it more fundamental. You cannot but feel the great poetic energy produced by the presence of so many poets in one city. The verses interweave in the air, rhythms intertwine; old and new poetic spirits and traditions are coupled. We human beings are at one with the past, the present and the future. Poets from Tanzania and Zimbabwe, from Japan and India, from Belgium and Serbia, from Argentina and Colombia and Spain, have very similar concerns. The world and the poem are one and the same. Robert Graves wrote about the only poetic theme: life and death. I think that for me to meet Carlos Sahagún, Juan Gelman, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Edoardo Sanguineti, Gonzalo Rojas, Mazisi Kunene to mention just a few names, has been essential.

D.S.— The public is drawn by spectacle. Poets who join other forms of expression to the word, such as the Canadian Paul Dutton with his onomatopoeia, or the African Chirikure Chirikure who sings his poems, are effective in raising applause. “But he who is much applauded must worry, for he is giving people what people want to hear”, says Octavio Paz. What is your thinking about this?

F.R.— Even in the case of the so-called 'performers', I am not even sure they look for applause. These poets are not our personal favorites but we respect the various forms with which poets seek to better express a text. We don’t invite poets to create performances. But it does happen that some poets improvise new forms of communication with the audience. They cannot be censured. The audience cannot be taught a form of behavior towards certain poetic acts. It is simply inevitable that poets, who are invited for their poetry and not for their performances or for the way they express their poems, address the audience as they wish. There are also those tribal poets who try to develop an interaction with the public. I listen to them.

D.S.— The published records of each festival are becoming a literary archive of great value for those who want to learn about contemporary poetry. Please tell us about this work.

F.R.— The poetry review Prometeo has reached number 69 over twenty-two tortuous years. We have had a great number of collaborators from many different countries. We count on a stable group of translators. And always, as a base, a group of poets, members or non-members of Prometeo, some of whom have been our friends for more than thirty years. But we debate each step with energy and integrity. Many guests have donated anthologies of the poetry of several geographical areas; others have sent us works of other poets. The internet provides ever more reliable information on contemporary poetry. During the year, we translate selections of works written by future candidates. We have a great volume of correspondence. We edit the Colombian pages of Poetry International. We have inspired the foundation of new festivals in Argentina, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador and New Zealand. Poets who have come to Medellín have founded similar events in South Africa, Portugal and Italy. There is always a great effervescence in our work group. We don’t sleep. The destiny of poetry is profoundly intertwined with the destiny of all human beings.

D.S.— What most impresses the poets invited to the festival?

F.R.— I think that what most attracts our guests — and what impresses us the most — is what the philosopher Karl Marx called "the education of the five senses": the transforming capacity of poetry in the collective and individual intimacy of the audience, and the important role of what some intellectuals and academics contemptuously label "the masses". The festival audience is a unique body in movement, intelligent and loving, with a thirst for beauty and truth, concentrated and profoundly involved with the poetic experience and the desire for a new life.

D.S.— What do you think about the participation of the Colombian state in an event that has such a social impact on the country?

F.R.— The Colombian state invests large sums in the payment of foreign debt but above all in the endless war against the armed insurgency, the economic cost of which, if invested in the welfare of the people, would serve to radically eliminate the causes of the conflict. The Colombian state has considerably reduced the modest, but useful, assistance they used to give us. The media are also quite indifferent to the festival, their coverage being meager, so that we have to do our own publicity which fortunately is sufficient for our purposes.

D.S.— Finally, how do the organizers of the festival face the different political situations that surely affect an event on such a scale?

F.R.— Up to now, the International Poetry Festival of Medellín has celebrated almost 906 acts, in which in sixteen years, 647 poets from 131 countries have read their poems in almost all of the open and closed spaces of the city: theaters, open air theaters, libraries, universities, museums, cultural centers, the planetarium, parks and streets all over the city, refugee camps, the headquarters of labor unions and cooperatives, prisons, mental and other hospitals, and so on. The political situation is this: we think that poetry is for all people. People of all social classes and political and religious convictions, students, workers, professionals, the employed and the unemployed, all, are attracted to the festival. We have never faced an adverse political situation, beyond the tight spots in which we have sometimes found ourselves due to the actions of some government or local employees. But they know that we cannot be politically manipulated; they have shown respect for us so far.