Guest of the ilb 2001
Fernando Rendón was born in Medellín, Antioquia (Colombia), in 1951. He gained his first experiences writing poetry and having it published in journals as a teenager. His debut work 'Contrahistoria', a visionary idea of future in complete opposition to the realities of apocalyptic excess in his country was published in the 1980s. He has edited many journals, for example 'Clave de Sol', 'Imago', and 'Sol de Movimiento', and in 1982 he founded 'Prometeo'. The Latin American poetry journal has issued 60 numbers to date. The creative journal sparked off the establishment of many poetry initiatives in the cultural metropolis of northwest Colombia and in the Country has a whole. This helped provide an ethical and aesthetic counterweight to the terror of the civil war, which has now been raging for 40 years.
In 1991 he and a team of three poets founded the Medellín International Poetry Festival, which takes places every June. It regularly attracts crowds of over 100,000 and has become the biggest event of its kind in the world. So far around 500 writers from all five continents have participated. The large number of visitors is, however, not the main reason why the festival in Medellín is such a remarkable event. It has become such an extraordinary phenomenon due to the frankness, intensity, enthusiasm and directness of the mainly young audience from all sectors of society, who come together in a true celebration of poetry at the free event. Fernando Rendón believes that the persistent and overwhelming fascination for poetry can be explained by the perilous times the people are enduring, as well as their hopes that they will see the end of them. "Pain sensitizes us. Poetry enables us to cope with the crisis and to identify with our city despite the hostilities of the war. People welcome poetry because it is a way of living life again. It also reminds us of the past, when poets spoke directly to a community rather than through the print media. Poetry is a real test: the search for the unknown and the resurrection of humankind. It also provides certainty that life has not been completely lost or destroyed. That is why the people who live in and around Medellín heed the call of poetry." In 1993 the first of the international poetry series 'Collección Prometeo' appeared, now numbering 13 volumes. During the poetry festival of 1996 the 'Escuela de Poesía en Medellín' was founded at the Universidad de Antioquia. The first Latin American school cooperated with the 'Schule für Dichtung' in Vienna. The festival was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize in 2006.
His poetry has been translated into several different languages, including French, Italian, Croatian, Hungarian and Portuguese. It sometimes alludes to myths, sometimes to centres of art. He questions the fate of humankind in times of sudden, earth-shattering catastrophes; he restlessly and rebelliously seeks the original sources of lost dignity, intellectual diversion and creative freedom. His poetic language is sonorous, quasi Dyonisian, vivid and dynamic. The poem 'The Storm' considers the natural cathartic power of poetry in itself. "The rain/washes the blood away,/washes the memory clean of cruelty."
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