Philippine Venue of Chinese Poetry Spring Festival Gala

Official website of Chinese Literature : https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/MwPrYpP6JH9TStoyRpOgzQ

The Chinese Poetry Spring Festival Gala is the only legal event entitled “Spring Festival Gala of Poetry” in China,which is jointly sponsored by China Central Television (CCTV) and China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and is in the charge of the Ministry of Publicity of the People’s Republic of China. Its founders are Qu Jinxing and Yu Hongying. 

In 2021, the Philippine venue of the Chinese Poetry Spring Festival Gala was officially established, and the first session was been held on the Chinese Lantern Festival in 2022. This year’s one (The 2nd session) will be held on the Chinese Lantern Festival (February 5, 2023) too. 

Now, the list of the staff of Philippine venue appointed by the Beijing headquarters of the Poetry Festival Gala Committee is announced as below :

President : 

伊登·索里亚诺·特立尼达（Eden Soriano Trinidad）, 田宇（James Tian）

Vice-president :

克桑西·洪德鲁·希尔（Xanthi Hondrou-Hill） ,叶莲娜·格里戈里耶夫娜·阿纳涅娃（Елена Григорьевна Ананьева）,伊丽莎白·埃斯古埃拉·卡斯特罗（Elizabeth Esguerra Castillo）,阿德里安·菲斯加·卢格（Adrian Fisga Luague）,米尔德里·德·乔雅·帕（Mildred De Joya Par）

Chairman of the General Assembly : 

莉迪亚·基亚雷利（Lidia Chiarelli）, 阿布杜卡赫·科西莫夫（Abdukakhor Kosimov）, 伊塞尔达·努内斯（Isilda Nunes）, 阿尔瓦罗·马约（Álvaro Maio）, 奥尔加·列瓦德娜娅 （Ольга Левадная）

IFLAC: Third Prize for Lidia Chiarelli, Italy

IFLAC WORLD PEACE POETRY CONTEST September 21, 2022.

Lidia Chiarelli (Italy) won the Third Prize as ” Distinguished Poet, dedicated to the promotion of World Peace and Freedom”.

LOVE THE WORDS: Lidia Chiarelli is one of the winners of 2022 Poetry Contest for Dylan Thomas’ celebration

love-the-words-anthology-for-dylan-day-2022-finalDownload

Paradise Lost by 田宇 James Tian, China. Italian translation and art by Lidia Chiarelli, Italy

Tribute to William Blake: Behemoth and Leviathan – @Lidia Chiarelli Art

Paradise Lost

What is despair?

What is helplessness?

What is appeasement?

What is shock?

When everything has to make way,

For endless selfishness,

Is the tragedy,

Of paradise lost !

Leviathan has grown up,

Behemoth is already showing strength.

Why can’t we kill evil in the cradle?

Why the rights our God gifted us,

Now the stumbling blocks?

It’s often easy to see through one thing,

But it’s difficult to make the right choice !

This is the inherent death of human nature,

It never be forgiven,

Though we can get across.

Everything is handled by interests,

There is always only self in the brain,

How could we make timely rescue,

Correct response and rock?

Please open your eyes,

And see the world we’re living in now.

Full of falsehood, war and slogans,

Is this the rhythm of civilization?

Every breathing life,

Feeling is the most powerful weapon !

Start accepting different voice,

Won’t let selfishness go to the limit,

Really for the sake of faith and freedom,

Give voice for the truth and lot

By James Tian

_________________

Paradiso perduto

Cos’è la disperazione?

Cos’è la debolezza?

Cos’è la riconciliazione?

Cos’è il trauma?

Quando tutto deve farsi spazio,

Per un egoismo senza fine,

 È la tragedia,

Del paradiso perduto!

Il Leviatano è cresciuto,

Behemoth sta già mostrando la sua forza.

Perché non possiamo eliminare il male nella culla?

Perché i diritti che il nostro Dio ci ha dato,

Ora sono pietre d’inciampo?

Spesso è facile vedere in un’unica direzione,

Ma è difficile fare la scelta giusta!

Questa è la morte intrinseca della natura umana,

Non si può mai perdonare,

Anche se possiamo capire.

Tutto è gestito dagli interessi,

C’è sempre e solo l’io nel cervello,

Come potremmo salvare ogni cosa in tempo,

Con una  giusta e forte risposta?

Per favore, aprite gli occhi,

E guardate il mondo in cui viviamo ora.

Pieno di falsità, guerra e slogan,

È questo il ritmo della civiltà?

Per ogni essere vivente,

L’amore è l’arma più potente!

Cominciate ad accettare una voce diversa,

Non lasciate che l’egoismo arrivi al limite,

Per vero amore della fede e della libertà,

Date interamente voce alla verità

James Tian

Translated by Lidia Chiarelli, Italy

“Water Prayer” – to Dylan Thomas, Son of the Sea, poem by Lidia Chiarelli, Italy

Water Prayer

to Dylan, Son of the Sea

Seagulls and restless rooks

challenge the wind

on this winter morning.

Under a pearl sky

the waves sing the rising sun –

the first glimpse of light on the horizon

  fades too soon.

Here and now

Dylan’s words resound:

The waters of the heart

push in their tides…*

And from the ancient cliff

I pause and listen to

the voice of the sea:

a water prayer

that softly evaporates

among the fleeing clouds.

*from: Light breaks where no sun shines

Lidia Chiarelli, Italy

#dylanday #lovethewords

Dylan, Son of the Sea – digital artwork by Lidia Chiarelli, Italy – (from an original photo by Nora Summers)

Philippine Venue Chinese Spring Poetry Gala Festival: a milestone of Contemporary Poetry

HRM Princess Eden Trinidad

On February 15 we celebrated POETRY @Philippine Venue of the Chinese Poetry Spring Festival Gala. The event turned out to be a real milestone in the history of Contemporary Poetry because of the high quality of the poems submitted via Zoom Video Communications, on the occasion of this special festival in China. In addition, February 15 is considered an auspicious day because it is also the Chinese Lantern Festival.

Thanks to 田宇 (James Tian), Qu Jinxing, Chief Planner and Director of Chinese Poetry Spring Festival Gala, Yu Xiaogao, Director of the Chinese Poetry Spring Festival Gala, Deputy Director of the Organising Committee and Director of the Calligraphy and Painting Art Centre, and Princess Eden Trinidad

田宇 (James Tian):

The list of winners of Philippine Venue of the Chinese Poetry Spring Festival Gala was announced,

to you all congratulations

Best Poet Prize：

莉迪亚·基亚雷利（Lidia Chiarelli）

卢西拉·特拉帕佐（Lucilla Trapazzo）

叶莲娜·阿纳涅娃（Елена Ананьева）

Excellent Poet Prize：

斯马拉格迪·米特罗普洛（Smaragdi Mitropoulou）

潘胡里·辛哈（Pankhuri Sinha）

克桑西·洪德鲁·希尔（Xanthi Hondrou-Hill）

阿布杜卡赫·科西莫夫（Abdukakhor Kosimov）

Excellent Young Poet Prize：

尼格尔·阿里夫（Nigar Arif）

苏西梅塔·古斯霍尔（Suchismita Ghoshal）

瑞贝卡·洛维（Rebecca Lowe）

梅德·科尔比奇（Maid Corbic）

ONE OF THE POEMS READ WAS “AN EVENING SKY” BY LIDIA CHIARELLI, ITALY

Streetlamp, painting by Gianpiero Actis, Italy

An Evening Sky

A slash of Blue! A sweep of Gray!
                   Some scarlet patches – on the way –
                   Compose an evening sky . . .

—Emily Dickinson

So sweet was

the scent of those evenings

when

our steps invented long distance routes

in the summer gardens

when

slowly the lights were lit

and competing with the moons and the stars

formed parabolas of light

on the opaque stones of the paths.

Then, life

just begun

seemed to reveal

– just for us –

a sky of unreal colours.

Countless images

(fragments of old memories)

that

today

recreate and break

in the weary kaleidoscope

of the mind.

Lidia Chiarelli, Torino Italy

Poem in memory of my father Guido Chiarelli, head engineer for the lighting projects in Torino 1956 – 1968

Lidia Chiarelli at the “Global Chinese New Year Poetry Concert” for the New Year 2022 (TIGER YEAR).

Lidia Chiarelli

Lidia Chiarelli joins the “Global Chinese New Year Poetry Concert” for the New Year 2022 (TIGER YEAR), invited by Anna Keiko. (January 31, 2022)

《五虎呈祥》诗情辞丑岁 艺韵贺寅春2022全球华人新春诗艺音乐会2022年1月31日正值中国农历壬寅年春节除夕，《全球华人诗艺音乐会》主办方特别择此吉日，云集五大洲华人诗歌与艺术之贤才精英和热衷中国文化的多国著名诗人（包括诺贝尔文学奖候选人），隆重推出一场具有环球视野与学术高度的诗意盛宴！届时敬请关注文旅直播和其它多平台的全球播放。

The Five TigersPoetry and Art to celebrate the spring 2022 Global Chinese New Year Poetry Concert on January 31, 2022, the organizers of the “Global Chinese Poetry and Art Concert” have chosen this auspicious date to gather the elite of Chinese poetry and art from five continents and famous poets from many countries who are passionate about Chinese culture (including Nobel Prize candidates) to present a poetic feast with global vision and academic height! Please stay tuned for the global broadcast of the event on the Cultural Travel Live and other multiple platforms.

Prof. Ada Aharoni (Israel): Ponte di Pace

PONTE DI PACE

Mia sorella araba, costruiamo un ponte delle meraviglie
dal tuo fico e dalla tua vite ai miei
sopra il dolore bollente della battaglia!
Salima, mia sorella araba,
Quando rideremo di nuovo
come due madri, invece di piangere
sulle tombe dei nostri figli?

Tu ed io, Salima, amica mia,
su questo ponte delle meraviglie
nella fragranza del gelsomino in fiore,
tenendoci per mano e sussurrando segreti
sui nostri amori, i nostri figli, i nostri progetti,
e il nostro più profondo desiderio di un cielo libero e luminoso
coronato da scintillanti stelle della pace.

Quindi, mia sorella araba, costruiamo un ponte robusto
di tollerante comprensione al profumo di gelsomino,
dove ognuna si siederà con il suo bambino
sotto la sua vite e sotto il suo fico
e nessuno ci farà paura,
E NESSUNO CI FARÀ PAURA!

(Traduzione di Lidia Chiarelli, Italia)

________________

BRIDGE OF PEACE

My Arab sister, let us build a wonder bridge
from your fig tree and vine to mine
above the boiling pain of the battle!
Salima, my Arab sister,
When will we laugh again
like two mothers, instead of weeping
on our sons’ tombs?

You and me, Salima, my friend,
on this wonder bridge
in the fragrance of blossoming jasmine,
holding hands and whispering secrets
about our loves, our children, our plans,
and our deepest yearning for a bright free sky
crowned by twinkling Peace Stars.

So, my Arab sister, let us build a sturdy bridge
of tolerant jasmine understanding,
where each shall sit with her baby
under her vine and under her fig tree
and none shall make us afraid,
AND NONE SHALL MAKE US AFRAID!

Ada Aharoni (Hebrew: עדה אהרוני‎; born Andrée Yadid, 1933) is an Egyptian-born Israeli poet, writer, lecturer, sociologist and peace researcher. Since her first poetry book, Poems from Israel, was launched in 1972 she has published 34 books, including peace poetry, historical novels, sociology and history books, biographies, drama, film-scripts, literary criticism, and books for children. The uprooting of the Jews from Egypt, including herself, following the establishment of Israel in 1948 is one of the main topics in many of her novels. Her research on this “Second Exodus” has been a major focus in her career.

Aharoni is the Founder and World President of Iflac: The International Forum for the Literature and Culture of Peace. (Source: Wikipedia)

Aeronwy Thomas:

Aeronwy Thomas, photo by  Martin Holroyd (Wikipedia)

BEYOND THE TEXT – HOW TO ENHANCE DYLAN THOMAS’ WORK

            Music has been much used in Shakespeare’s works so why not Dylan Thomas’?

             I will try to make an incomplete but impassioned case why music and poetry including poetic prose as used in my father’s play for voices, Under Milk Wood, can well do without the addition of music.  My suffering in this regard should prove part of the case.

            Ever since I returned to England in 1970, I have been approached by modern composers to listen to Fern Hill or more obscure poems arranged to music.  My first experience was to be approached by an earnest American graduate who wished to use “If my head hurt a hair’s foot” in an original musical composition, using the words as a loose lyric for the music.  In those early days returning from a long stay in Italy, I must have been somewhat naïve.  I agreed to accompany him to the recording studio where his pre-recorded composition was overlain somehow onto a reading of the poem.  Last minute, I was informed that the reader would be me and requested a moment to look at the poem.  A more obscure poem about a child’s fear of causing his mother pain in birth could not have been chosen from my father’s poems.  For me the meaning was almost impenetrable at such short notice so that I must have read it clearly but without understanding.  This was no problem as the music was dominant and drowned the words effectively.  The young artistic entrepreneur then revealed his plan.  Because I had read the poem no royalties would be expected as a beneficiary.  The reason that poem and a couple more had been chosen for the recording was that it was little known to the general public and therefore doubly immune to the payment of royalties.  In any case, the young man told me, he’d spent his last dollars on the recording and was sleeping on friends’ sofas as a result.  I had a sinking feeling that this sort of situation was going to be inevitable now that I was living in London and not in faraway Sicily or even Rome.  Cheap flights to these destinations were still to happen in the future.

     My foreboding was increased when asked to read “Fern Hill” at a public function for the Welsh Development Corporation.  It would take place at the Hilton and feature clog dancing and harp playing which made me slightly uneasy.  However, the fee of £30.00 was an inducement and I turned up in a long cotton Laura Ashley dress and a copy of Dylan’s Selected Poems.  Immediately before I closed the evening with my reading, a band of merry clog dancers filled the floor and skilfully demonstrated how you can dance in uncomfortable wooden shoes.  I would have to change the mood skilfully  and dreaded being helped by the except the harpist.  I was lucky that time as the harpist topped and tailed by did not over-ride the poem with a tinkling waterfall of background musak.

    That occasion kick started my own poetry performance career and I was asked by any number of different organisations to give a reading of my father’s poems. Included were literary festivals and groups as well as entertainment spots at art galleries or even book launches of biographies about my father.  My constant dread was to be requested (after all the arrangements had been made) would I mind a quiet musical accompaniment as I read

the poems.  My fear was often justified as three piece flautists or recorders drowned the words.  By the end, I had to ask that the musical interludes were just that… a musical item between not during poems.  Nowadays, unless it is a reading abroad with translations so that Fern Hill can take 10 minutes to read with its translation, I insist the music is kept to three slots: beginning, interval and end.

     Under Milk Wood, a play to be heard – but mostly seen, integrates songs into the text with words by my father and music by his friend, Swansea composer Dan Jones. These seem to work very well and give a little break from the richness of the text in so much that the words are song-like in scansion and use simple, often childlike words.  The director Michael Bogdanov was the first to add Welsh folk songs for the glee party mentioned in the play to great effect.  Nearly all the productions I see nowadays include additional music such as the UMW Jazz suite by  Stan Tracey directed by Malcolm Taylor, a veteran of these productions, played as the audience settles itself and during the interval.  These productions I can only recommend but I have also suffered all singing and all dancing(the expression used by one of the performers of Under Milk Wood. On a slightly higher level one hopes, The Welsh National Opera has also approached the literary trustees to sing Under Milk Wood.  I await the outcome. 

     Returning to my experiences abroad, I have now new artistic decisions to make regarding my own poetry.  As a result of teaching creative writing to school children in Turin, one of the teachers, Lidia Chiarelli Actis (who later became my official translator) introduced me to her husband, a part-time painter, Gianpiero Actis. He was keen to illustrate some of my poems and in this way we have to date had dozens of exhibitions based on Word and Image.

The local civic council became involved and subsidised events in which painters all over Turin were invited to illustrate a surreal poem of mine, The Object.  The response was surprisingly positive with nearly a hundred painters of every imaginative style taking up the invitation. Lidia, herself a poet, has also experimented with a Canadian artist who works over the internet.  I wouldn’t be surprised if music will be part of future collaborations.

         .

     In conclusion, I have to admit that the cross-fertilisation of the different arts: words, illustration and music can work if thought out and executed sensitively. This appears to contradict my initial assertion that music and poetry (and as it happens images) cannot enhance each other.  They can and do as experience has taught me.

AERONWY THOMAS, 2008

“Tanta Luz” poema de Fernando Salazar Torres (México). Traducción y arte de Lidia Chiarelli (Italia)

TANTA LUZ

Demasiada luz dentro de mi pecho

y otro amanecer más camina.

Muy temprano a lo largo del desbordamiento

mis ojos son tan del color del horizonte,

que les caben el abismo, sí, la oscuridad,

y no de tanto soñar se muere, sino se respira!

.

Más lejos de aquella línea horizontal

un mundo me divide y me deja,

y aquí, nada espera, solo la muerte.

.

Hay tanta luz

que de esperanza sentí dolor y angustia.

Esta vida es la fuente de otra luz.

.

Hay harta claridad en mí,

tanta, que me ahogo de cielo y Dios.

.

Sí! Allá, al otro lado de la mirada,

más allá de estos ojos que me abisman,

el sol cubre mi alma de otro cuerpo.

TANTA LUCE

Troppa luce nel mio petto

e un’altra alba si incammina.

Molto presto in quella dispersione

i miei occhi sono così simili al colore dell’orizzonte

che si adattano all’abisso, sì, all’oscurità,

e non si muore per tanto sognare, ma si respira!

.

Più lontano da quella linea orizzontale

un mondo mi separa e mi abbandona,

e qui, nulla attende, solo la morte.

.

C’è così tanta luce

che  dalla speranza ho sentito dolore e angoscia.

Questa vita è la fonte di un’altra luce.

.

C’è così tanta chiarezza in me,

così tanta che sto annegando nel cielo e in Dio.

.

Sì! Là, dall’altra parte dello sguardo,

oltre questi occhi che mi inabissano,

il sole copre la mia anima con un altro corpo.

______________

Fernando Salazar Torres: (Ciudad de México). Poeta, crítico literario, ensayista y gestor cultural. Licenciado en Filosofía por la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Iztapalapa (UAM-I). Maestría en Teoría Literaria (UAM-I). Estudia el Doctorado en Literatura Hispanoamericana en la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) con estancia de investigación en la Universidad de Salamanca (Usal). Ha publicado el poemario Sueños de cadáver y Visiones de otro reino. Su poesía y ensayos se han publicado en distintas gacetas y revistas literarias impresas y electrónicas. Su poesía ha sido traducida al inglés, italiano, catalán, bengalí y ruso. Director de la revista literaria Taller Ígitur Coordina las mesas “Crítica y Pensamiento en México” y “Diótima: Encuentro Nacional de Poesía”. Dirige el Taller Literario “ígitur”. Colabora en la revista literaria “Letralia. Tierra de Letras” con la serie de poesía mexicana “Voces actuales de México” y “Poesía española contemporánea”. Forma parte del equipo de colaboradores de Caravansary. Revista Internacional de Poesía (Colombia), la cual forma parte del sello Uniediciones. Es miembro del PEN Club de México.

https://tallerigitur.com/