Capital del poesia mundial

Granada, Nicaragua - A whiff of warming popcorn reaches the front rows of seats facing the large makeshift stage at the Plaza de la Independencia as the formal inauguration of the 8th Festival Internacionale de Poesia de Granada gets underway. This is on Tuesday, Day of Hearts, albeit 14 hours late (in my mind, that is, whenever it beams back home).

Somehow the notion of poetry and popcorn in an early evening betrothal affirms the promise wafting about in the air. A pleasant breeze from the nearby Lake of Nicaragua enhances the positive anticipation.

We have heard, after all, since arriving a couple of days earlier, how Granada is billed as the “capital del poesia mundial (poetry capital of the world).” Our hosts, themselves poetas, have thundered that claim repeatedly before preliminary readings.

Tonight over a hundred poets from 54 countries gather and sit ourselves on folding metal chairs laid out in two wide columns facing the stage. Arranged behind these rows are so many more seats, radiating nearly all around the plaza. And all are taken, by about a thousand spectators, with hundreds of curious onlookers and listeners standing behind, some surrounding that lone popcorn man intent on plying his equally democratic trade.  

A couple of large video screens have been erected on either side of the spectacle. The stage backdrop is an alabaster white building, elegant colonial, with a central recession where a large streamer has been strung up high between the porticos. As with others hung all over town, starting with one over the highway from the Managua airport an hour away, it proclaims: “Bienvenidos, Poetas del Mundo!”

Warms the heart, makes one feel more special than popcorn. We are as rock stars, or treated as such in this admirably appreciative town. In fact one streamer has “Movistar” also painted in one corner. Well, that turns out to be a festival sponsor, one of the two major cellphone service providers, the other being Claro.

What is clear is that an invite to this prestigious feast of world poetry presages an utterly delightful experience.

Formally, it begins in twilight hour, when several personages ascend the stage to arrange themselves on the long table foregrounded by a flower bouquet. These include the mayor of Granada, the bishop, the Spanish ambassador, culture and tourism officials, and the poet-organizers headed by the festival president, Francisco de Asis Fernandez Arellano.

Soon after the fest’s sixth edition in 2010  when our very own premier poeta (y mi amiga para siempre) Marjorie Evasco became the first Filipino representative  Senõr Francisco suffered a stroke. He has recovered well, but still has to be helped to his feet. Thus the microphone comes to him, and he makes all his announcements and recitations while seated.

Despite his condition, the passion is evident in his booming voice as he welcomes all participants, cites all the countries and sponsors involved, and declares the festival open. Much applause. Fireworks light up the sky right above the tall steeple of the yellow-ochre cathedral that borders the plaza, facing a park where trees shelter a daily tiangge of crafts and souvenir items.

Two “reading tables” of eight poets each are scheduled for the inaugural reading. Fittingly, it all starts with the beloved living legend recognized as the home country’s most important poet, the 87-year-old former revolutionary, priest and culture minister Ernesto Cardenal. The crowd heartily cheers him on, while shutterbugs scamper closer to the podium that almost conceals his now stooping figure.

Following him is the notable American poet Robert Pinsky, whose gravelly voice mesmerizes as much as his intriguingly provocative verses. The other well-received readers of the first set are the attractive Yolanda Castaño of Spain and the towering hulk Kama Sywor Kamanda of Congo, who reads three love poems in French for Valentine’s Day.

When a poet reads other than in Spanish, young Nicaraguan volunteers follow up with the translation. Desmond Egan, a prominent poet of Ireland, chooses to reverse this process by having translations of his poems read first.

Taking up the rear for the second group of poets is the festival’s biggest ticket item, the Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott of Santa Lucia. But I miss his turn as my camera battery runs out and I have to rush off to my room in Hotel Dario for a recharge. When I return to the plaza, the poets have been replaced onstage by the popular singer-songwriter Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy, whom the local audience obviously can’t have enough of.

I realize that the poets have been escorted to the nearby Casa de los Leones, also known as Casa de los Tres Mundos, where welcome cocktails are to be hosted that evening by the Embassy of Spain. The affair establishes what would be a pattern night after night: the readings followed by late cocktails or dinner with drinks  wines, the local beer Toña, and the superb rum that Nicaraguenses take pride in, Flor de Caña, which comes in several age editions.

Initially I try the Gran Reserva that is seven years old, and find it of fine flavor, smooth and effective even at only 70-proof. I like it so much that I pick up a bottle at a mini-mart. But on the next night of partying, with cumbia music provided live and which always leads to dancing, two tall and lovely promo ladies offer the Flor de Caña Centennial edition of 18 years. And so I hardly ever leave their side. 

Until midnight, that is, when the party’s over, and some of us walk the couple of blocks back to Hotel Dario, past a promenade strip of resto-bars with al fresco tables always filled with diners and revelers.

Here is where the Egans had asked me to share a bottle of Chilean sauvignon blanc the day before, towards sundown. It is the ideal place to watch the world of Granada go by: the stilt-walking higantes, the cotton candy man, the balloon man, the maracas man, along with young boys and girls peddling all sorts of tourist stuff like little ceramic bird pipes, trinkets, T-shirts, woven hammocks, etc. 

They don’t get too aggressive with visitors. Groups of blue-unformed Tourist Police are always around. Now and then a firecracker is set off, or drums pounded to remind everyone that it’s a fun town with a daily, nightly festive spirit.

This shows even in the facades of two-story buildings and bungalows that supply any street with enough variety of pastel hues on walls, the other common denominator being the slanted roofs of red tiles.

The poets have been deployed among several hotels. We who stay in Hotel Dario feel more privileged than most, as not only do we have Ernest Cardenal and Derek Walcott with us; the hotel’s vintage Castilian look is a picture of graciousness.

A small fountain is the central feature in the main courtyard and garden. A long lanai with lounging arrangements leads to a smaller back garden with a small swimming pool that I find myself sharing with the Irish and Russian couples during private downtime after lunch, when the Nicaraguan sun still streams through past the second-story clay roofs that are a playground for pigeons.

I walk up a tiled stairway to the wrap-around balcony to get to my corner room, numbered 119. Again, luck of the draw hints at significance, for it’s right before an upper suite with its own short stairway leading to a door with a name: Ruben Dario.

The honor harks back to the famous Nicaraguan poet born as Félix Rubén García Sarmiento in 1867, who pioneered the Latin-American literary movement known as modernismo that flourished towards the end of that century, and for which he earned the title “Prince of Castilian Letters.” Dario is mentioned in dialogue in Nick Joaquin’s Portrait of the Filipino as an Artist.

Dario, Cardenal, Walcott… Plus a hundred other poets occupying a small radius of city blocks of cobblestoned streets with names like Penny Lane and Abbey Road, off that esquina or corner that features yet another resto-bar named Imagine, past which horse-drawn carriages and carts clip-clop along, also past dozens of churches of glorious facades, parks, schools, art centers and the Choco Museum-Cafe by Calle del Beso, garden cafes and crafts shops  in one of which I pick up a pink leather bag for someone I remember who is also associated with the crafting of poems from the heart.

Why, every night as I turn in, after Facebook and rum, I am happily assured that indeed I’ll be spending another night in the capital of world poetry..