Poetry International

(Contepec / Michoacán, 1940) is considered one of Latin America's outstanding authors and poets in the Spanish language. Octavio Paz recognized his early talents, which served him in getting his poetry and proze published when he was a youngster still.

In 1969 he commenced giving lectures in Mexican literature at universities in the USA and in 1972 he became cultural attaché at the Mexican embassy in the Netherlands. A few years later he was appointed embassador, first in Berne, later on in The Hague. On his return he took on the management of the cultural institute in his native state, and as such he origanised its first international poetry festival. The second such festival, a year later, was abruptly cancelled by the state governor while its guests were on their way already.

In 1985 Homero Aridjis co-founded the Grupo de los Cien, a group of one hundred internationally renowned artists and intellectuals which got actively engaged with environmental problems. He is its driving force - and as such held in low esteem by the Mexican authorities. The activities of himself and his American wife Betty Ferber are regularly interfered with and the distribution of his literary work throughout his native country is often hindered.

He succeeds in concisely describing the unique and fascinating aspects of life, putting each such aspect in a suggestive context. There's a breath of the mystic Nahuatl songs and present-day initiation hymns of the Huichol indians in his verses. Environment and nature are recurring themes both in his proze and in his often lyric poems. As he says himself: `Ecology is poetry. Nature and poetry are closely linked. I defend water, soil, trees, animal life by making them the central issues of my poems.'