A Multicultural Reading of the 36th International Poetry Festival of Medellín
(Mai White)
From Australia, a nation formed by migration, layered identities, and many mother tongues, the announcement from Medellín arrives as a reflecting cultural signal. The jury’s judgement for the 36th International Poetry Festival of Medellín, to be held from 4 to 11 July 2026, speaks powerfully to the state of world poetry today and to the enduring human need for dialogue across borders.
The scale of this year’s call is striking. Eight hundred and two poets from forty six countries responded, carrying with them the cadences of different languages, histories, and emotional landscapes. For a multicultural society like Australia, this diversity feels deeply familiar. It mirrors our own streets, classrooms, and literary spaces, where voices from many origins coexist, sometimes in tension, often in creative harmony. Medellín, through this call, once again confirms its role as a global meeting ground where poetry becomes a shared human language rather than a closed national practice.
What stands out in the jury’s reflection is the impressive number of submissions and the seriousness and vitality of the work received. The selected poems emerge from a wide spectrum of poetic approaches. Some refine language to its barest, most concentrated form. Others lean into narrative, experiment, or hybrid structures. Together, they demonstrate that contemporary poetry does not move in a single direction. Instead, it branches, crosses paths, and sometimes contradicts itself, much like the world it seeks to understand.
From the perspective of Multicultural Press Australia, this plurality is not a complication but a strength. In societies formed by multiple cultures, poetry often embraces the burden of memory, displacement, and adaptation. The jury’s comments reveal how many poets turned toward intimacy, personal history, and memory, while others addressed violence, social transformation, and the urgent moral questions of our time. They reflect the lived reality of many communities, including migrant and diasporic communities in Australia, where private lives are often inseparable from global events.
The jury also highlights how difficult the selection process was, noting that many works of great value could not be included. This acknowledgment matters. It reminds us that literary selection is never a simple ranking of merit, but a process shaped by dialogue, contrast, and the need to create a coherent conversation among voices. In this sense, the ten poets selected are not presented as definitive representatives of world poetry, but as participants in a larger, ongoing exchange.
The ten chosen poets form a constellation of perspectives that feel particularly relevant in today’s fractured world.
From Palestine, Alice S. Yousef writes out of historical pain while still holding space for collective hope. Her work shows the experience of many communities living with unresolved trauma, yet refusing to surrender their future.
Ariel Rosé of Poland is recognised for precision and restraint, working with silence and image as carriers of memory, a reminder that what is left unsaid can be as powerful as what is spoken.
Spain’s Bernard Engel interrogates inherited language and experience, treating words themselves as sites of tension and breakage. This approach resonates strongly in post colonial and multilingual contexts, where language often carries both belonging and exclusion.
Denise León and Leandro Calle, both from Argentina, explore different but complementary paths. León weaves intimacy with historical memory, while Calle moves beyond the centrality of the self to think through relationship and otherness, an ethical stance that feels essential in multicultural societies.
From Colombia, Diana Carolina Daza brings the body and territory together as living archives, an idea that speaks directly to Indigenous and land based perspectives around the world, including in Australia.
Imèn Moussa of Tunisia names the Mediterranean as a space of loss and ethical questioning, transforming migration from a statistic into a deeply human concern. This is a theme that resonates strongly in a country shaped by waves of migration and ongoing debates about borders and belonging.
Lion Guerrero from Honduras articulates history and dignity through a voice of collective commitment.
Marisol Vera Guerra of Mexico grounds her work in the relationship between thought, body, and land.
Tilsa Otta of Peru is recognised for her lucid challenge to dominant discourses and her expansion of poetic language, reminding readers that poetry can be playful, critical, and transformative at the same time.
Beyond individual achievements, what the jury’s statement makes clear is the continuing relevance of poetry itself. In a global climate marked by uncertainty, violence, and fragmentation, the sheer number of responses to this call becomes a quiet but powerful affirmation. Poetry remains a space of resistance, reflection, and shared imagination. It offers not solutions, but ways of listening, ways of staying human when systems and narratives threaten to reduce lives to abstractions.
For Multicultural Press Australia, this moment invites reflection on our own literary ecosystems. Festivals like Medellín do more than showcase talent. They create temporary communities where difference is not only tolerated but valued. They remind us that cultural exchange is not a luxury, but a necessity. In a world increasingly shaped by division, poetry offers a slower, deeper form of connection.
The jury’s gratitude toward all participating poets and toward the organisers of the International Poetry Festival of Medellín feels genuine and earned. Year after year, the festival sustains a space where poetry is lived, spoken, and shared as a collective experience. From Australia, we recognise the importance of such spaces. They keep open the channels of cultural dialogue and remind us that, despite vast distances, the poetic word continues to travel, carrying with it memory, hope, and the possibility of understanding.
As the 36th edition approaches, Medellín once again positions itself as a crossroads of the world’s poetic voices. For readers, writers, and communities across cultures, this is not just an event to observe, but an invitation to listen, to reflect, and to remain open to the many ways language can hold our shared humanity.
