Poets from China, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Spain, France and Ireland are to meet some seventy Israeli poets and intellectuals, belonging to the different religious communities (Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze), on the occasion of the tenth edition of the Nissan International Poetry Festival, taking place in Kfar Maghar, in Galilee, between May 17 and May 20, 2009.
The goal of the festival is the celebration of national and international poetry by this encounter between Israeli and foreign intellectuals, prose writers and poets. The programme of the events includes public readings, characterized by linguistic diversity, literary activities addressed to pupils, symposia on such various subjects as women's poetry, the lyric genre as the expression of inter-cultural dialogues and the influence of European modernism on Hebrew and Arabic literature. An exhibition of local fine artists is on display at the „Eshkol Pais" cultural centre during the Festival.
Professor Naim Araidi, initiator of the festival: "We invite the general public to an encounter with a multi-layered culture, proof to the fact that poetry is the common language of peace among individuals and peoples."
The festival is organised by the "Nissan" Non-profit Organisation for Culture and Art Development in Maghar, whose artistic director is professor Naim Araidi. Other partners include: the Israeli Ministry of Culture – Druse Culture Department, Omanut LaAm (Art for People), HaReshut LePituach HaGalil (Galilee Development Authority), the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Miphal HaPais, with the support of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Tel Aviv for promoting the guests from Romania.
Romanian poets Robert Şerban and Florin Iaru, who participate in the Festival, reprezent two „ages" of the contemporary Romanian poetry.
Robert Şerban is a member of the so-called „generation 2000" poetry, characterized by self-imposed solitude, isolation in a personal, highly intellectual world, as a means of fighting back the contemporary societal reality. Florin Iaru's poems, as well as those of the other „generation '80" poets, create the illusion of a "kingdom of words" and demonstrate the use of an "extreme detail precision", emphasizing "the technics, the method, the stilistic registry" (Nicolae Manolescu, literary historian and critic).
