São Paulo – Next Thursday (26th), the Syrian Arab Cultural Centre will promote a poetic evening to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Poetic Movement of São Paulo. The event will feature ten declaimers and will include an acoustic guitar performance.
The Poetic Movement of São Paulo was established in 1980, and since 1984 it promotes poetry evenings at the Arab centre, located on Augusta Street, in the city of São Paulo. This year, the evening will see the release of the book Antologia em Versos (Anthology in Verses), containing work by 105 poets.
The event will be coordinated by poet and journalist Khaled Fayez Mahassen, a Lebanese who has lived in Brazil for 40 years. He claims that he arrived in the country during the dictatorship, and that significant events in Arab history, such as the Palestinian issue and conflicts in Lebanon, marked the composition of his work with patriotic, revolutionary poetry.
Presently, however, he dedicates himself to writing romantic poetry, in which the presence of his Arab origin is also quite strong. "My work certainly has an Eastern touch to it. We Arabs are very sentimental, we turn everything into poetry."
At the event, the poems will be read in Portuguese, but Mahassen claims that a poem should be read in Arabic as well. He explains that he has been writing since age 14, and that in the beginning he used to write in Arabic. The poet believes that the combination of Arab themes and Portuguese language yields good results.
"The congeniality of Brazilian people, the nice coexistence, the freedom to speak as you wish, all mixed with Arab culture, results in beautiful poetry," says Mahassen.
Service
Poetic evening and release of the book Antologia em Versos
Date and time: August 26th at 08:00 pm
Place: Arab Syrian Cultural Centre
Augusta Street, 1053, Bela Vista, São Paulo
Noble Hall
Free admission
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
