DECEMBER 10th - 13th 2020
We would like to inform you that due to the implementation of a new lockdown in our country and the increase in the number of coronavirus cases, the organizing and scientific committee of the “Jean Moréas International Awards” and the Patras International Poetry Festival postpones the date of the event on December, 10-13 of 2020.
Digital Event
The Patras World Poetry Festival 2020 this year is entitled "National Poets" and plans to host 60 poets from 15 different countries around the world.
This year the festival be held online and virtually, as far as COVID-19 impact affects significantly the implementation of this event.
In the four-day online event there will be 6 meetings lasting up to 3 hours, where the guest poets will be presented with readings in 2 languages, via live connection. The events will be attended by invited representatives of institutions and the jury, while the program will include speeches, presentations, tributes, music, etc.
In addition, the following activities will take place within the schedule of the Festival events:
The 3rd Patras World Poetry Festival 2020 is organized by the Poetry Fountation “Grafeion Poiiseos”, the literary website Culture Book (culturebook.gr) and the multicultural center Epikentro Plus History & Arts, while every year it is under the auspices of the Ministries of Culture and the Ministry of Tourism*. Supporters of the event are the Greek Library of London, the Cultural Center “Kostis Palamas”, the University of Western Macedonia, the Hellenic Open University and many other important institutions, as claimed under the Aegis of the President of the Hellenic Republic.
Awarding of Poetry Awards "Jean Moréas" for the year 2019
This annual event will be held digitally at one session of the PWPF Poetry Event 2020, with a presentation of the award-winning poets and recitations by them. This is the annual event during which the "Jean Moréas" Prizes are awarded for Greek poetic art and Greek poetic production in its entire range. They are recognizable nationwide and concern the poetry collections that were published throughout the previous calendar year from the year of the award. They refer both to young poets and newcomers and to those who are recognized with their poetic work along time.
The event is highly appreciated by the Greek literary and artistic circle of readers. In this year's event, in addition to the institutionalized awards, a very important foreign poet will be honored, who with his/her lifelong work honors the literature outside Greece.The Award Committee is composed of Greek University professors, as well as very important poets and poetry critics who will evaluate the work of the honorees.
Sincerely,
On behalf of the organizing committee.
Kotopoulos H. Triantafyllos, President of the “Patras World Poetry Festival”
Skiathas D. Antonis, President of the Poetry Fountation “Grafeion Poiiseos”
Alaniadi Maria, Event Manager of the “Patras World Poetry Festival”
Shakhawat Tipu, BANGLADESH
Heidegger's knife!
A mother's poem
The Poems
Heidegger's knife!
Objects have no worth, they sit as though in sense
Abandoning it all as all languages say, 'Goodbye, the world!'
They involutes so mean to disappear who knows where!
Languages live tacit, the move silent to the boot like murderers
Now leading you and now following, hard to tell
The killer alphabets do boil in saliva down your throat!
So, pitiful a day today, the he-robber next to the she
Yet no one can take it from the other's tongue
Pots inside wholesome, alas, the doors just out a window!
The sick warrior is sitting with the bird dead in front,
What strange times we are in, they too lost their tongue
And whoever rides to infinity do not return either!
Sometimes city pigeons groan in fear and cry
Fear the strange, and strange becomes what says the non-dead
Yet non-sense of philosophers turn illiterate like rosary beads!
All languages come home, save Bengali which doesn't
Alas even when she does she lose her sense, how strange!
All that happen do happen, how come making no sense!
Translated from Bengali to English by
Salimullah Khan and Shakhawat Tipu
*
A mother's poem
Why do my eyes gets closed as the sky get blurry?
I get too wet, my tears mix with rain
Lest someone see me cry much for no cause
I try to hide my tears, but why do I even try hide?
Today I look in my mother's face for no reason
I see my daughter, unable to see eye to eye,
A pale forehead trembling in fearful gaze,
Her black brows wrinkled in a serene rage,
And gnawing teeth breaking the world!
I said: Oh, mother, how would you endure to counter!
'Dad, why was I born a girl', she asks in a straight stare;
'Mom,' I said, 'how would I if you weren't there?'
Translated from Bengali to English by
Salimullah Khan and Shakhawat Tipu
The Poet
Shakhawat Tipu, born in 1971, lives in Dhaka. He is a distinguished poet, essayist and editor from Bangladesh. A prominent figure of the new Bengali poetic movement, Tipu established himself as a leading poet of his generation. His poems have been translated in Greek, Spanish, Italian, Serbian, Slovenian and English. He has published seven titles of poems and a book on a famous Bengali sculptor and her works. Tipu edited Jatiya Shahittya (2008), a magazine of linguistics and philosophy and Charalnama (2011), a collection of street people's interviews with a subaltern dictionary. His poems appeared in many magazines and anthologies around the world.