The Caribbean Festival has brought me many surprises, and at the same time it has allowed me to get to know myself a little more from the experiences that I have lived. One of them took place on Saturday the 6th, where I had to organize a literature event as a Literary Bazaar at the headquarters of the Hermanos Saíz Association.
For the preparations I had to go through anxiety constantly, because it was my duty to contact each of the guests, promote the activity and make sure that everything went well (because I'm not a perfectionist but I hate doing things wrong).
That Saturday I spent the whole morning preparing for the moment of the activity. I arrived early and with the help of one of the producers I arranged all the chairs in order. Also, on a table, I placed several books of use to sell them at lower prices, so that this literature will never die.
At 8 p.m., when the space was supposed to start, only a couple of people had arrived, so I had to wait about twenty more minutes before starting. Then more people joined in.
There were troubadours, poets and other artists in the audience. The dynamic I used was the following: I asked everyone to introduce themselves, to say a phrase that they liked, and to say what title they would give to a poem of their authorship. This exercise was quite comical and positive. It helped me to relax as the host of the event and to establish a closer contact with each of those present.
So we gave space to the music. Those young people with their guitars managed to shake us from head to toe, which made me think about the quality that exists in local musicians, it doesn't matter if they come from some academy or if they learned informally. Music is something alive in the people of my city. That's why Santiago de Cuba is considered the Creative City of Music.
After those songs, I established a "round of poets". Margarita Morlot, Yoel Cipriano (@yoecipri), David Ugás and I read several texts following the order of the hands of the clock. This part was very important because it can serve these guests later to have this activity within their curriculum as artists, so I felt happy to be able to contribute this, in addition to the magic that poetry itself gives us.
Finally I dared to do another experiment, which is known as "exquisite corpse". For this I took a sheet and a pen. It all consists of each person writing a verse and then folding the sheet, so that the next person cannot see what the previous one wrote. Everyone will contribute a line to the poem that will then be discovered when everyone has finished.
Unfortunately, it didn't turn out so well here, but it was a lot of fun trying to read the crazy sentences that some people wrote, so we all laughed a lot and enjoyed the "creative process" even more.
Finally, the musicians shared some of their songs again. I really appreciated everyone's assistance. Although some of the guests were absent without any explanation and not everything went as I expected, I was able to give those who were there a moment of enjoyment and quality. Organizing events is a very difficult and stressful thing, but smiles and applauses serve as relief to any other bad time.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. The photos used are of my autorship, and were taken with my phone, an Oukitel C31.
Until next time!