Cercle des Poetes Cornus

Last week, Granada, a town on the edge of the big lake Nicaragua, was hosting the fifth edition of the poetry festival. Cyril and I went on Wednesday, the day when the carnival mixes up with the festival, when the poets dance with the monsters, when the words whirl with the music and dance and noises of the celebrating town.
Even though I was looking forward to it, and was hoping it would be worth the four hours of bus and then the hour of car we did to get there, I was a bit septic as our experience of the carnival of Massaya wasn t soo great. But, we weren t disappointed at all, and it was nothing like I had ever seen before! The big parade which walked down the streets was composed by different groups showing dances and costumes from all over Nicaragua, each of them with there own loud music. It was incredible how those people danced all day long in the heat without getting tired… whether they were skinny and looked like professional dancers, or whether they were fat old men. And then there were groups of people dressed up as characters of the local legends, people making fun of the politics, indigenous people marching for more rights, giants dancing… and then there were the poets.

Poets from all over the world who took turns to read some of their poetry to the people in the crowd. We heard Chinese poetry (which was my favorite), Costa Rican, Ecuadorian, Brazilian, Flemish, Bahamian, Mexican, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and many others… and they where all following the coffin of the dead poet (a fake one) which they were going to throw in the lake… I can t explain this part of the festival very well, because I didn t understand why they needed a dead poet and why they should all be celebrating the death of the poet…
If I understand correctly, the reason why we celebrate carnival in Europe is to scare winter away… And if that’s what it is about here in Nicaragua too, well I think Nicaraguayans are better at it, because the noise, the dances, the scary costumes were quite scary… And the result is definitely more convincing here (they probably scared it away for ever a long time ago).

Bon bon bon… donc je vai juste commenter, et ne pas trop m etaler sur le sujet, comme ca ca leur apprendra, a ceux qui ne veulent pas faire des efforts d anglais!
Donc on a eu la chance, mercredi passé (woaw c est le premier accent que j ai peu ecrire depuis 3 mois!), d aller a Granada, assister, dans le cadre du festival de poesie de la ville (qui est assez renomer, et internacional avec ca… genre y a eu des declamation de poeme en chinois, en anglais, francais, espagnol, neerlandais, arabe, etc!), a la journee de l enterrement du poete comme ils appelent ca…
En fait c etait un genre de mixte entre un carnaval anime, assez effrayant parfois, avec leur masque de monstres affreux, un festival de dances traditionelles (avec pas mal de diversite), des caricatures et des critiques politique (des slogans poesia cero remplacaient les habituels hambre cero= faim zero), et une reunion de poetes d une cinquantaine de pays, qui se melaient sans complexe a tout ce remue menage et ce vacarme, et dansant comme les autres du cortege.

Je trouvais tout ca vraiment chouette, interressant et beau a voir et a entendre, et donc je n ai aucun regret d avoir fait un peu de deplacement pour l occasion, car peu etre que j aurai pas des masses d occasion d assister a d autres festivals de poesie a Granada… (d ailleur pour ceux qui ne le savant pas, on sera en Belgique le 17 juillet…) (photos a venir des que la rebellion des ordinateurs sera finie ici au nica.)