A meeting of the WPM Coordinating Committee will be held on Sunday, March 9, during the month of Ramadan, attended by: Rati Saxena, Vadim Terekhin, Achour Fenni, Ashraf Aboul-Yazid, Alex Pausides, Cao Shui, Oscar Saavedra, Ana María Oviedo, Christine Peiying Chen, Aminur Rahman, Hanan Awwad, Enrique Hernández, Ali Al Ameri, Nicolás Antonioli, Marcelo Reis, Sylvie Marie and Fernando Rendón, with the goal of taking about the Poetry schools for the peoples.
Those present are reminded that at the WPM Congresses in Colombia and Venezuela we assumed many tasks of the approved Strategic Plan. These tasks may seem overwhelming, but most of the members have assumed them according to their possibilities, taking into account that everyone must develop their own poetic work and projects. WPM has collectively advanced in the realization of global actions for Palestine, publications and translations, and has initiated and developed poetry workshops and schools. It is necessary to go on the realizations of the Poetry schools for the peoples.
On the way to developing a World School of Poetry, the conditions for its existence are being created. The degree of development of poetic schools in Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Honduras and Chile has been visualized.
Ana María Oviedo exposes the process with which the National Poetry School of Venezuela is carried out, sponsored by the Ministry of Education. A founding group of poets created a content, uniform in terms of content and method, in order to measure the results. With this content, the Ministry of Education allowed them to work in 200 secondary schools, with a free method, with 4,000 students who registered freely. The process lasts one year and the topics include the concept of poetry and the work of poetry in social networks. They published a pedagogical magazine of Venezuelan poetry with master texts. Their goal is not to form poets, strong sensibilities, critical thinking and autonomous people.
In Cuba they currently have work in four provinces. The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Cuba has decided to include among its national priority programmes the promotion of the World Poetry School and its establishment in the provinces first, and in all municipalities afterwards.
In Chile they have 20 years of experience, taking the poetry school to numerous spaces and all kinds of populations, entering places invisible to institutions. It is necessary to transform the negative into a revolution of the word, a revolutionary act. We can all advance if we rely on technological advances, schools require work with the image to attract the new generations.
It is reported that progress is being made in China, in contact with several organizations and the University of Beijing is preparing the realization of a branch of the Poetry School; it is working with several poets to elaborate a guide text on contemporary poets and Moderna world poetry; they consider it convenient to combine presence and virtuality to reach more public.
In India, young poets have been invited to start school in their cities. Each language has its own culture and its traditional poets; they also dabble in working with children as they do in South America.
A workshop will be held in Bangladesh to which poets from that country have registered. WPM members are invited to disseminate the activity and promote the participation of poets from each country, since national tasks require accompaniment and help from the Movement.
In Peru, they are joining the experiences of poetry schools, with the presence of the poets Marco Martos and Hildebrando Pérez, who have extensive experience with that work at the University of San Marcos.
In Brazil there is experience in working with poetry workshops in public universities, dissemination of knowledge and popular experiences. They are creating a reference center in collaboration with the University of Rio. The BRICS Forum will bring together rectors from countries at the Federal University of Rio. The Cultural Municipality of Rio will create a poetry festival and they are looking for sponsors and funding.
In Algeria they have experience with the development of workshops. They are presented with the difficulty of distance and the cultural difference between the populations.
There is also experience in poetry and literature workshops in Argentina. The Argentine Society of Poets has been reactivated, it is an autonomous organization that performs voluntary work and there is interest in reviving community work projects. The fascist tendency of the central government has led artists to realize self-management.
It is proposed to carry out an action against Milei’s fascist policy and what it represents through a strong reading of poems from Latin America.
Poets from Algeria, Argentina, Brazil ask colleagues in Venezuela to share their bibliographic material, manuals, programs, curricular designs, in order to have a work platform that supports their own experience.
The orientation for the national coordinators follows the line of the WPM Manifesto: For a World Poetry Revolution. We must take poetry to all corners of the planet, share readings, reflections on the essentiality of poetry. It is proposed to advance in the realization of workshops and pedagogical experiences in each country, in accordance with local policies, with the participation of outstanding poets. WPM will coordinate an international pedagogical poetic action, with hundreds of workshops on the same day, demanding a beautiful, just and poetic world, without wars, without hunger, a new life for poetry in the realization of the millenary dream of living in a world that we have and in peace. The difficulty of human history demands a lot of energy on our part to oppose. Here we go with the World Poetry Movement, of which hundreds of poets are part, which is a force to accompany the peoples.
