• Submitted by: admin
• Arts and Culture
• Caribbean
• Havana
• Literature
• national
• personalities
• 05 / 26 / 2009

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Cuban poet and essayist and 2001 National prizewinner in Literature Nancy Morejon is to open the ceremony that, as every year, will start with the sowing of a tree at Havana's Victor Hugo Park.

The academic program includes sessions like the panel on Revolution and Writing headed by People's Power National Assembly (Parliament) President Ricardo Alarcon.

The island's poets and their guests will attend for seven days concerts, readings, and conferences on poetry as citizen responsbility and poets against war.

Also present is the World Poets Board in Defense of Humanity, with representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Syria, Egypt, Mexico, South Africa, and Pakistan, among others.

The event, to be run until May 31, will honor Palestinian academic Mahmud Darwish, who died last year in the United States, and Cuban Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdes (Placido), marking his 200th birth anniversary.

The festival is organized by the National Cuban Writers and Artists Union, the Havana Historians Office, and the Cuban National Commission for UNESCO.

(Juventud Rebelde)