At 7:00 pm on Wednesday (August 9, 2023), the poet Ashraf Aboul-Yazid was a guest on the Rituals of Creativity TV Program, which is broadcast live, prepared by the poet Muhammad Al-Kafrawi, presented by Fatima Al-Sardi, and directed by Faten Abdel Aziz.
The guest of the program spoke about his participation in the 33rd edition of the Medellin International Poetry Festival (Colombia), and the 17th edition of the Mondial Poetry Festival of Venezuela, which together hosted the first congress of the World Poetry Movement (WPM).
The program began with a segment (3 minutes) of a singing and dancing music show from Venezuelan folklore, presented at Simon Bolivar Theater in Caracas, at the opening of the Venezuelan Mondial Festival:
Presenter Fatima Al-Sardi:
Dear viewers, in this section Rituals of Creativity, we are discussing with you the first congress of the World Poetry Movement. We are pleased to have with us the poet, novelist, traveler, and translator Ashraf Aboul-Yazid, who is also the national coordinator of the World Poetry Movement in Egypt. Welcome.
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
Welcome, Ms. Fatima, and welcome to the audience of Rituals of Creativity.
Fatima Al-Sardi
First, we want to know more about the World Poetry Movement, when was it established, and who created it?
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
The movement was established in the context of interest in poetry, especially that which is presented through poetry festivals around the world, and therefore it began in one of these ancient festivals; At the International Poetry Festival of Medellín, which has been taking place in Colombia, for the past 33 years.
12 years ago, in 2011, a large group of directors of poetry festivals from around the world gathered, and of course among them was the most famous American poet, Jack Hirschman, and Bas Kwakman, Europe, Fernando Rendon, and Rati Saxena from India. They gathered to establish the movement that embodies the role of festivals. And the role of those in charge of festivals in promoting poetry, publishing it, and spreading its ideas around the world.
Fatima Al-Sardi
Fernando Rendón is the one who delivered the opening speech for this congress. How do we get to know him first, and then ask how this speech sums up the reality of poetry or the future of poetry?
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
Poetry is inseparable from society, and therefore the struggle carried out by Fernando Rendón on a personal level... You know the tense history of contemporary Colombia, about which a lot of violence was known, especially in the city of Medellin, so he bet that poetry might turn the violence surrounding society into peace, now Medellín is a cosmopolitan city, it is intended for tourists, and it is also intended for digital nomads, those who work remotely, that is, they live in Medellín but they occupy jobs via the Internet all over the world.
This transformation, I mean, is attributed to the power of poetry, and Fernando Rendon's belief as a great iconic poet in poetry and its role to change society, and even after these three decades in managing the festival he founded, he resigned to join the electoral journey, and to authorize an electoral program in Colombia that calls for the dissemination of culture and poetry for the sake of society.
Fatima Al-Sardi
Colombia and Latin America in general are amazing in terms of literature. The mixture of literature and politics is in it. I think Venezuela and the congress witnessed this mixture... Can you tell us in detail what the atmosphere was like in Venezuela?
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
Certainly, yes... Let me convey to our esteemed viewers the idea of the two festivals, that were held in Colombia and Venezuela.
The World Poetry Movement Congress began in Colombia and concluded in Venezuela, on the sidelines of two major festivals; The Medellín Festival, which celebrates its 33rd birthday, and the Mondial Poetry Festival of Venezuela, which celebrates its 17th birthday.
You are facing a poetic movement that united the two festivals, or twinned the two festivals, but that, as I said, comes from people who believe in the power of poetry and the power of the word.
It was beautiful when we listened , at the opening of the Poetry Festival in Venezuela, the Minister of Culture talking about his love for poetry. It is true that he is not a poet, but he recited a poem written by his poet father, and the Minister of Information who sponsored the conference in Venezuela is a poet. His 100 Haiku poems expressed his thoughts, and his belief in the power of the word.
I mean, behind the political action there are leaders who believe in ideas and believe in the power of the word, and defend the right of poetry to spread. In this respect, I mention the schools of poetry established in Venezuela, and the activities were attended by about 2,500 young poets, who studied in this poetry school, even the head of state, President Maduro received representatives of the WPM from the continents of the world; from Africa was the poet Nimrod, from Palestine the poetess Hanan Awwad, from Asia there was Rati Saxena, from Europe was the French poet Francis Combe, and of course Fernando Rendon, one of the founders of the movement. Mr. President welcomed them in a TV Program, he has a program called (With Maduro), in which he receives cases that need care, he speaks to families and society, and he dedicated time to poetry in which he listened to these poets who represent the world's poets.
Fatima Al-Sardi
Poets from all continents of the world were represented in this great cultural event... I wanted to know from you how the map of poetry differs from one continent to another and is it really different or the same?
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
No, the map is completely different.
There are still in Africa - for example - those who believe that poetry is not only for reading and reciting, but rather for performance. During the FIFA World Cup in Russia there was a poet from South Africa at this opening, who represented poetry, and that was through dancing and singing, because the poet in Africa is not only the one who recites his poems quietly, and reads from paper, but he also performs .. we also saw this with examples of African poets.
The poets of France and Europe are full of ideas they express, and perhaps their contemporary history which is full of wars, two World Wars, and many struggles with resistance movements. You also find this in European poetry...
For Asia, I think we are facing more than one geographical reality; I can tell you about Korea, which I had the good fortune to translate for three monks, who wrote poetry, and it is different poetry, poetry full of contemplation, full of looking at nature, they on topics that no one writes about; I do not think that there was an Egyptian poet - for example - who wrote about a frog or wrote about a worm.
Fatima Al-Sardi
You mean haiku?
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
Haiku poetry is different, because haiku poetry has a rhythm; because you introduce two lines, and then conclude with a third, as if you are making a symphony in three lines. The answer in the third line differs.. It contains some reason, and it contains some wisdom, as well as yourself. Each poet knows how he sees the situation and expresses it in three lines, to say some wisdom. .
Fatima Al-Sardi
I mean, you were in Venezuela, and there were haiku poets there too? The Arabs had many poets.
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
In addition to the poet Freddy Nanez, the Minister of Information, who released (The Album of Rain), there was also a female poet, who knew that we were Arabs, and I discovered that she was Lebanese, who came to Venezuela at the age of eight, got involved in life and became a Venezuelan academic, speaking Spanish and writing haiku poetry also in Spanish.
Haiku poetry is very popular, not only because it is easy to write, but also because it can be expressed at a speed appropriate to the times and reading.
Fatima Al-Sardi
I used to confuse haiku poetry with Zen poetry, or monks' poetry as you say. What is the difference between the three?
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
The poetry of the monks can tell you about the fog, when he sits and sees the fog enveloping the city, from above the mountain, poems are long, not just short, but haiku as a form is short and condensed poems, two lines leading to a third line, different from them but a consequence of them,
Fatima Al-Sardi
Jack Hirschman, the founder of the World Poetry Movement, you published an anthology on him, tell me more?
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid:
When Jack Hirschman passed away, there was something like an invitation to the sons and daughters of the World Poetry Movement, which he assisted to found, to honour his name. So I invited many friends through the Internet to write something like a letter, something like a lament, something like celebrating this great name, so it was Egyptian Poems and Testimonies, and the cover of the anthology was illustrated by the great artist Yassin Haraz...
I was nice that I turned this cover for this anthology into two frames, and presented them as a gift, one to Fernando Rendon, and the other to the Swedish-American poet Agnetta Falk, Hirschman's wife, during the World Poetry Movement Congress in Medellin..
Fatima Al-Sardi
Mr. Ashraf, we will take a break from the World Poetry Movement Conference, and come back again:
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Interval reading a poem by Ashraf Aboul-Yazid, Simon Bolivar Theater, Caracas, Venezuela, with Spanish translation ...
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Fatima Al-Sardi
We return of our viewers to our guest poet, novelist and traveler Ashraf Aboul-Yazid, and his talk about the World Poetry Movement Congress in which he participated...
Mr. Ashraf, you have five collections of poetry, and you presented this poem at the festival. How do you choose the poem, and from which collection?
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
The poems that are usually recited at festivals must have a translation, some of which are translated directly from Arabic, and my two collections, which were published in Costa Rica in Spanish, were translated by Dr. Nadia Jamal Al-Din, and there are poems that have also been translated into Spanish, such as the poems of Medellin, which have been translated from English.
The availability of the poem means that it must have a translation available in Spanish if I am reciting in a Spanish-speaking country, this is about choice.
But of course the poem's time duration, and perhaps its global atmosphere and transcendence; not to be a locally oriented poem, not to address someone who does not understand it, because there are no explanations on the stage, I mean when I write a poem on flamenco, it does not need explanation, because everyone in Simon Bolivar's theater knows flamenco dance. And maybe there's nothing wrong with talking about it to a new audience.
You choose the poem.. I cannot, for example, recite the poem Memory of Silence because it is a poem that is said in 20 minutes. You need to recite a collection of poems in a context of time that does not exceed, with translation, a quarter of an hour, for example. The volume of the poem, and perhaps its language, and its transcendence of the local to the global influence determines the choice of the poem for recitation.
Fatima Al-Sardi
Multinational poetry conferences, how do they enrich poetry or how does the poet get out of them with an experience that benefits his poetic journey?
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
It is just like you read about a character and meet the character. It is completely different. I mean, the voices that came through the papers are now a living being in front of you. You can address him and ask him about ideas. This is with regard to the characters, and the meeting of poets; It means another world completely different from that you meet a poet through his collections or on the Internet. But face to face it is different.
Likewise, the ideas are always pushing you forward, and when we started writing poetry, you talked about the first five collections. I mean, poets not only in the way of speech, but in the way of thinking, the way of life. You need this journey, not only in geography, but in ideas, because it is the journey of ideas that will leave you wondering, and questioning is a prelude to change and development.
Fatima Al-Sardi
We will take another break from the first conference of the World Poetry Movement, in Colombia and Venezuela, and back again
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Two minutes from the World Poetry Movement conference __ Medellin and Caracas
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Fatima Al-Sardi
We return again to our guest, the poet Ashraf Aboul-Yazid, the coordinator of the World Poetry Movement in Egypt.
Mr. Ashraf, you have attended many activities of the World Poetry Movement via the Internet. The reality of poetry on the Internet, and the reality of poetry in the current reality
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
The online meetings were a prelude to this live meeting for the first time with these crowds, meaning in the year 2011 there were a dozen poets who founded this movement, now the matter is different, you are talking about dozens, meaning every continent is like it in the first World Congress of the World poetry movement with fifteen from each continent, 15 came from Africa, from Asia, from Europe, and from America, because America is calculated in the two continents together and is considered as one continent, and when we moved, we moved to present ideas.
Yes, we celebrate, but we want tomorrow to be different. How was the difference? To the existence of a strategic plan for the next five years, just as countries set strategic plans for construction, etc., the movement had to set strategic plans for its future during the next five years, taking into account not only the need for poetry to spread, but the need for society to adopt the ideas of poetry, meaning we always call for Peace, so many activities will be against wars, and many invitations, and many poems should be against wars...
Also, one of the most important dangers facing the world now is illegal immigration, so what is the role of poetry in this? It must intervene.. perhaps to urge people to believe in their homelands more, to find greater opportunities, not to throw themselves into perdition across the sea for the sake of the unknown.
We want to look for alternatives that nurture hope in our different homes, because if we succumb to despair, I think that is death itself. As was the slogan of the World Poetry Movement’s Congress , From death to life. We do not want to die. We want to live. We do not want to seek wars. Because, we want to seek peace. Likewise, we do not want illegal immigration to the unknown. No, we want stability. and stability for a better future.
It is true that this may sound like rhetoric, but repetition of this rhetoric turns it into ideas that are amenable to reality. Drawing competitions can encourage the embodiment of poetry in more than one place.
I mean, it was one of my ideas that I said.. Imagine, for example, that a famous football commentator such as Medhat Shalaby is benefiting the stopped playing (in a football match), to say: I take this opportunity to read a short poem to you within 30 seconds, for example, and millions hear it.
This is the transfer of poetry, to turn on the school radio every morning to recite a poem to an audience of students, this is a victory for poetry
We want poetry to spread. On bus stops, we find poems posted instead of advertisements. The spread of poetry means the spread of the values that poetry defends. They are also, as I think and believe, virtuous values, and they are values for the life of society.
Fatima Al-Sardi
Many critics believe that the last twenty years witnessed an increase in the number of poets and a decrease in poetry.. Is this a global phenomenon or is it a local phenomenon, and is it really a local phenomenon, or is there an exaggeration?
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
It is a big question, as big as the world is, but the definition of poetry is that which is not only read but moved by.
In the beginnings of classical poetry, the poetry that moved was that rhetoric, which was recited on platforms with a loud voice and moved the masses... whatever its ideas, then a movement of renewal came in poetry, and perhaps the digestion of international poetry began, and the revival of new Arabic poetry, so there was a difference, whether poetry inspired by the heritage and renewing it, and re-reading it, or whether the one who looked at the international rules of poetry, its Arabs or Egypt, or tried to renew in the molding of poetry, then there was the era of Nizar Qabbani who made poetry like daily bread and I think that there are many who imitated him even from Egypt and believed that this is poetry!
These transformations have brought us today to the fact that there are collections on Facebook that are published every morning, so the question is: What remains of them?
On Facebook, you read jokes, you read poetry, you read wisdom, and you read pictures, meaning a flood of pictures.
One image can affect you and stand and don't forget it. So is the poetry. Poetry is what remains. Poetry is the mirror of humanity. There can be no poetry calling for destruction. Struggle is not destruction.
The idea of poetry is what remains, which is a mirror of humanity and what is not defined. Poetry does not have strict rules, it is outside the rule. Sometimes I read a poem that I wrote years ago, and you say: When I wrote this poem, because the matter is different; Rather, it was expressing oneself at that time, and expressing humanity at that time.
What is left of it is important, and I think that one of the strategic matters that we were keen to mention in the five-year plan is to take care of translation, because we must not only stop at the borders of our language, we must read what others write, at the other end of the river, or the mountain, It is writing worth getting to know, whether it is poetry or a novel.
But the critics' indulgence in promoting the novel, and the prizes indulging in novel propaganda, I think negatively affected poetry.
Fatima Al-Sardi
A global phenomenon.
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
Exactly.
Fatima Al-Sardi
We'll take a second break from the seminar, and come back again
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Ashraf Abul-Yazid reading a poem (Message), Simon Bolivar Theatre, Caracas, Venezuela International Poetry Festival
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Fatima Al-Sardi
Dear viewers, another return to our guest, coordinator of the World Poetry Movement in Egypt, the poet Mr. Ashraf, although poetry is one of the oldest arts, and all peoples know it, I believe that every people entrusted a culture with its own taste for poetry, how was Venezuela's taste for poetry, and the audience's reaction..
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
Your people, will follow what you are making them accustomed to, and they are accustomed to holding this festival and celebrating it, not only at the Simon Bolivar Theater, which we were at a while ago, but the festival takes poets to many areas, schools, and perhaps theater halls.
In Columbia, We read poetry at the stage of chamber of commerce and industry, and we read Poetry in the houses of culture, outside the borders of the capital...
You also have to draw a map of the distribution of the movement of poetry, and the distribution of poetry, going out from the capital, so that the taste is general.
This means that tasting poetry and responding to it is like getting used to, just as people get used to something, maybe they get used to something better, which is poetry in this case.
Fatima Al-Sardi
Also, poetry, despite its age, takes on a different meaning, to the extent that no one can know exactly what poetry is. How was your vision of poetry, or seeing the movement of poetry?
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
Perhaps I would argue that every poet has his own definition of poetry, this is not a distraction, because everyone agrees on the importance of this poetry, the importance that makes him devote his life, devote his time, and perhaps his money, to the care of that matter.
We are volunteers in World Poetry Movement, meaning we do not take money from the movement to call for poetry, but we take what is better than that, which is belief in the power of the word. This belief pushes us to build a building that may be stronger than cement in order to continue our creative life.
Fatima Al-Sardi
The World poetry movement, what does it offer poets? Perhaps there is the five-year plan for the public, which is more concerned with the public than the poets themselves.
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
We are talking about anthologies such as the published poetry anthologies, we are talking about translation, and we are also talking about representing these poets for their country, perhaps in upcoming events, which means that there is a lot of hope in the future for this movement.
Fatima Al-Sardi
How will the festival be in the future, and are there plans for another conference after this first conference?
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
Certainly, the meeting proved to be a necessity, for poets to meet in order to discuss poetry issues, overcome the many difficulties, and revive workshops. This is important, it is very important that we listen to the new generation, and that there are new, non-calcified voices, and I believe that the success of the movement lies in the presence of a new generation of poetry writers.
Fatima Al-Sardi
Poetry is always renewed, and its rhythm is constantly renewed. At the end of this interview, I thank the poet - because today you are with us in your capacity as a poet - and other attributes. We had the honour Mr. Ashraf to interview you.
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
Thank you very much.