China-Portuguese-Language-Countries: A bridge named poetry

12
Mar

China-Portuguese-Language-Countries: A bridge named poetry

For the first time, poetry will be the central theme and dominant genre of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival. The festival will be held from March 15 to 24. The event pays homage to Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen in the year that would mark her hundredth anniversary. Her son, journalist and writer Miguel de Sousa Tavares, will be in Macau. Poet and translator José Luís Peixoto will launch a translation to Portuguese of a work by Chinese poet Jidi Majia, marking the encounter between the Chinese and Lusophone cultures through poetry.

During the event, poets from Portuguese-Speaking-Countries, Macau, and China will talk about their works and about the current state of poetic production and the role of poetry in the contemporary world.

The Script Road will also showcase other venues of artistic expression (painting, theatre, performance, cinema) with poetry as a central point of inspiration.

2019 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of American poets Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, as well as the 100th anniversary of the birth of Portuguese authors, who wrote his poems in the local creole language, Patuá. Special tributes will be paid to them all in a series of discussion panels, performances, film screenings and exhibitions involving local and international guests.

The homage to Adé will include a poetry recital in Patuá by the group Doci Papiaçam di Macau and the launch of a Dictionary of Macau Creole.

The Script Road will also make a point to celebrate the 100-year-anniversary of the 1919 May 4th New Literature Movement in China, by highlighting the contribution of some of its most iconic writers such as Hu Shi, Lu Xun, and Zhu Ziqing, Bing Xing and Lin Huiyin.

Local poetry association The Outer Sky will join the event represented by its members Bruce Lou, Elvis Mok, Jojo Wong, and Pansy Lau. The Macau-based theatre group Rolling Puppets will stage their puppet-theatre show, “Drug”, at the Navy Yard over the last three days of the festival. The show is a renewed adaptation of Lu Xun’s novel “Drug” published in 1919.

The Script Road will present Pedro Lamares “Maritime Ode”, which will be entirely read in a Macau stage. The long poem, considered central in the work of Álvaro de Campos, is seen as a masterpiece of Portuguese poetry.

The Taiwan band Wednesday & Bad to the Bone will play in the closing ceremony of the festival. After the band’s show, there will be a party.

Last but not least, Portuguese 2017 Eurovision Singing Contest winner Salvador Sobral will visit Macau for the first time, and will perform at The Script Road Concert scheduled for March 17.

Besides the Old Navy Yard’s Contemporary Art Center in the Inner Harbour, The Script Road will hold public sessions in diverse other venues, such as Art Garden, Albergue da Santa Casa, the Center for Creative Industries (Creative Macau), IPOR, Cinemateque Passion and Portuguese Bookshop.