• Submitted by: manso
• Arts and Culture
• 08 / 20 / 2010

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Havana, (AIN).- Poet Waldo Leyva, cultural attaché of the Cuban embassy in Mexico, was recognized today in the Aztec city of Querétaro for his systematic work in favor of the preservation, study, and promotion of the improvised oral poetry in Iberian America.

Leyva received that distinction from the Queretaro Institute of Culture and Arts (IQCA, after its initials in Spanish) of Mexico, and from the Cucalambean Day of the province of Las Tunas, during the II Iberian-American Day of children and young poets and singers that began in Querétaro with a concert at the Independence Square.

In front of a public that filled that historical place, representatives from Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Panama and Mexico showed in the stage the talent and the diversity with which the oral improvised poetry is expressed in the culture of the Spanish language.

As prelude to the concert, the participants in this edition, dedicated to Colombia and Venezuela, met at the Casa del Faldón, an emblematic cultural institution of the city, to listen to Lola Acosta, a Colombian journalist who made a dissertation about the forms in which the oral tradition is expressed in her country.

Following information located at the web site of the Cuban Foreign Relationships Ministry, the meeting at the House of Culture ended with an exhibition of the Cuban improvisation by the delegation of the Island.

This II Iberian-American Day of children and young poets and singers is sponsored by IQCA, the Secretary of Culture of San Luís Potosí, the Cultural Provincial Direction of Las Tunas and the Iberian -American Improvisation House in that Cuban province.

The closing of the program will be in Río Verde Green River, a municipality from San Luis Potosi, where the tradition of improvised oral poetry is very ingrained.

Translation: Rodney Lopez (Cubarte)