“The famous Cuban poet Waldo Leyva, Casa de América Prize winner, is the guest of honor at this XI version of the Meeting,” states a communication from the Organizing Committee.
Born on August 21, 1943, Leyva graduated in theater acting and directing.
The International Book Fair of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, will honor the Cuban poet Waldo Leyva today in the context of the XI City of the Rings Poetry Meeting, which brings together 57 poets from eight countries.
“The famous Cuban poet Waldo Leyva, Casa de América Prize winner, is the guest of honor at this 11th version of the Meeting,” states a communication delivered to Prensa Latina by the Organizing Committee.
The document adds that along with Leyva, writers from Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Chile, Italy, Mexico and Venezuela were summoned.
According to the source, after being honored this Wednesday as a guest of honor, the Cuban bard will speak at a reading table with his colleagues Patricia Gutiérrez, Marcelo Canavire, Paura Rodríguez and Tania Ganitsky (Colombia).
As a culmination of the XI City of the Rings International Poetry Meeting that began on June 3, on June 8 Leyva and the other foreign guests will offer a reading in Samaipata, at the La Mexicana Cultural Center, with the participation of residents of that town and members of the Llamarada Verde and Trueque Poetico workshops.
Born on August 21, 1943 in Remates de Ariosa, Remedios, former province of Las Villas, today belonging to Villa Clara, Leyva graduated in theater acting and directing.
He wrote dramatic works and was the founding director of the University Theater of the Universidad de Oriente, in Santiago de Cuba.
The patriotic epic of that city marked the vate’s sensitivity, and in 1974 he won the Poetry Prize at the Uvero Contest with his first book, Of the City and its Heroes.
In Granada, Spain, on May 15, 2010, the select jury of the 10th Casa de América Prize for American Poetry declared him the winner of this award for his volume El Rumbo de los Días.
Two years later, in Venezuela, his anthology When the Glass does not Reproduce the Face, won the Víctor Valera Mora International Poetry Prize, from the Rómulo Gallego Center for Latin American Studies.
His extensive creative catalog includes Of the City and the Heroes (1974), From the East of Angola (1976); With a lot of people’s skin (1983), El Polvo de los Caminos (1984); The Scratch of the Stone (1995), Brief Anthology of Time (2008); Assonance of Time (2009), The Course of Days (2010) and When the Glass Does Not Reproduce the Face (2012).
When referring to Leyva on the occasion of his 80th birthday, the Cuban writer and president of the Casa de las Américas, Abel Prieto, stated that he is a great poet, a surprising plastic artist and a soul brother.
Regarding the Santa Cruz de la Sierra International Book Fair, its organizers informed this news agency that it takes place in the Fexpocruz pavilions with the presence of 50 poets, 38 national and 12 foreign.
