'Filbo Poesía', became one of the most outstanding thematic strips of the 35th edition of the Bogotá International Book Fair, thanks to the way in which other arts, such as painting, image, music, dance, among others, were linked through practical workshops, improvisations, conversations and musical presentations.

Filbo pointed out:

The 35th version of FILBo celebrates poetry with different settings and special guests who have given prominence to verse, images and music.

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Throughout the Fair, which culminates tomorrow, Tuesday May 2, a varied program has revolved around poetry.

Among those that Filbo highlighted, stands out the tribute to the Afro-Colombian Mary Grueso by the Regional Center for the Promotion of Books in Latin America and the Caribbean (Cerlalc), and the Colombian Book Chamber, which remembered her work in an event in which she declaimed and gave thanks, while insisting on the importance of reading for the new generations.

The library of women writers from Huila ‘Mujeres Poetas,’ a project by the independent publisher Tierra de Palabras, which consists of nine works and which seeks to recognize women writers and give them the importance they deserve in the world of poetry, was launched through a remembered conversation.

The writers Alba Leonor Chaux, María Dubis Dussán, Olga Nieto de Rodríguez, María Nur Valderrama, Martha Cecilia Andrade, Yineth Angulo Cuéllar, Rosa Fernanda Collazos and Amparo Andrade, along with Ana Patricia Collazos, director of the publishing house, gathered at this event, who motivated the young women to read poetry and highlighted the example of Nieto de Rodríguez, the oldest of the poets, who at 98 is still writing and will soon launch a novel.

El libro más vendido en la #FILBo2023 para @Silabaeditores es el poemario de la maravillosa @unatalmeloparra#LaNocheDiceNunca
(El auditorio está lleno de amor) pic.twitter.com/PTmixHmYNC

— Michael David Durán (@MrDavidNight) April 29, 2023

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‘Poetry and photography workshop, the power of ekphrasis,’ given by the Mexicans Israel Holtzeimer, writer and editor, and Alessandra Narváez Varela, poet and teacher, thanks to an alliance between Filbo and the Bilingual Master's Degree in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and El Malpensante Magazine, became a space to explore the verses in a practical way.

"Ekphrasis is a technique that connects writing with an artistic medium and in this workshop the participants represented poems using paintings or photographs, while the guests directed the meeting towards the awareness of the participants from the senses and the perception of reality,” highlighted Filbo 2023.

Another of the conversations to be remembered was ‘Poetry and images: what words cannot express,’ which was led by the Colombian-Japanese artist Nobara Hayakawa and the Ecuadorian illustrator Roger Ycaza, who discussed the work as a whole that poetry with images exerts to express what words cannot achieve on their own, concluding that it is necessary to understand that poetry books with images are for everyone and should be considered as literary works and not just as books with symbols.

Rock was also one of the themes from which poetry was addressed, with the event ‘Riffs and verses: before Mexico and Colombia forget us,’ in which the cultural organization Eskarlata Poesía Rock celebrated its fifth anniversary fusing rock and Mexican and Colombian poetry to explore their similarities and differences.

In the event, where some poems were recited, they talked about how in the history of rock there has always been inspiration from poetry.