Lisbon, Sept. 18, 2024 (Lusa) - Thirty-five authors from eight countries will meet in Lisbon on the 26th for the second edition of the Night of Ibero-American Literature, with readings, music and debates around the verse ‘We emerged from the night and the silence’.
According to information released by the José Saramago Foundation (FJS), which supports this initiative by the Organisation of Ibero-American States (OEI), the activities will occur from 5 p.m. in seven areas of the city offering free admission.
Literary gatherings, poetry readings, book presentations, a reading club, a workshop and three concerts fill out tonight's programme, which closes at 9:30 p.m. at the Capitólio with the premiere of the show ‘Jangada de Pedra’ by Teresa Salgueiro, based on poems by José Saramago, Sebastião da Gama, Antonio Gala and Antonio Machado, among other poets.
The theme of this year's Ibero-American Literature Night is based on a verse by the poet Sophia de Mello Breyner - ‘We emerged from the night and the silence’ - to propose a reflection on freedom, exile and the coexistence of languages in Ibero-American territory, but also to mark the 50th anniversary of 25 April and the 75th anniversary of the creation of the OEI.
In addition to the FJS auditorium and the Capitólio, the Linha de Sombra Bookshop (in the Cinemateca Portuguesa), the Tivoli Avenida Liberdade Hotel, the Instituto Cervantes, the Instituto Camões and the Buchholz Bookshop will host the meeting, which will feature, among others, Galician poet Yolanda Castaño (National Poetry Prize in Spain last year) and Mexican writer Jorge Volpi (Planeta-Casa de América Prize in 2012 and Alfaguara Prize in 2018).
At the FJS, the meeting begins with a debate on the theme ‘This is how I spent my days far from freedom’, with José Manuel R. Barroso and Mário Máximo (Portugal), Carmen Yáñez (Chile) and Víctor Rojas (Colombia).
This will be followed at 6 p.m. by ‘Stories of migration and exile in the first person’, with Mirta Roa (Paraguay), Viviana Cordero (Ecuador), Armando Romero (Colombia) and Ana Paula Tavares (Angola).
At the same time, the Camões Institute will host Miren Agur Meabe (Spain), João Fernando André (Angola) and Luis Filipe Sarmento (Portugal), to reflect on the idea ‘At the centre of writing is my freedom’, followed by Yolanda Castaño, Luís Filipe Castro Mendes and Adriana Hoyos (Colombia), who will explore the idea of living ‘in the rapid orthography of the poem’, based on the poem by Nuno Júdice.
Between 6 p.m. and 7.30 p.m., the Instituto Cervantes is offering a reading mediation workshop with Elisabete Rosa-Machado, while Portuguese writers Afonso Cruz, Dinis H. Machado, Rita Tormenta and Mexican Jorge Volpi will meet in the Cinemateca bookshop at 5pm for a conversation accompanied musically by the saxophone of Edouard Rambourg (France) and the guitar of Nuno Rocha (Portugal), on the theme ‘In the film of my life, many lives happened’.
The Buchholz Bookshop will host the Ibero-American Book Club, for which works by Armando Romero, Rui Zink, Carmen Yáñez, Dinis H. Machado, Afonso Cruz, Adriana Hoyos and Rita Tormenta have been selected.
From 7.30 p.m., the lobby of the Tivoli Avenida da Liberdade Hotel will host the poetry and music show ‘Telling stories and other stories’, performed by the lyrical singer and declaimer Ana Celeste Ferreira.
The Ibero-American Night, curated by Lauren Mendinueta, is a festive day that aims to understand cultural plurality as a way of life.
AL/ADB // ADB.
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