Gioconda Belli Presents a Recital of Poetry & Song for Nicaragua

“Agua y Fuego” (Water and Fire)

Together with Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy they will perform a retrospective of music and poetry linked to the history of a country under two dictatorships.

By Elmer Rivas (Confidencial)

HAVANA TIMES – Nicaraguan poet and novelist exiled in Spain, Gioconda Belli is in San José, Costa Rica to perform “Agua y Fuego”, her latest program of “poetry and song”, accompanied by singer-songwriter Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy, on April 30.

“It is a get-together to take a journey, him of his music and me of my poetry,” says Gioconda, who is one of more than 300 Nicaraguans denationalized by Daniel Ortega’s dictatorship.

“I don’t feel expatriated or denationalized because Daniel Ortega doesn’t have the moral authority to denationalize anybody… They are acting act like medieval kings,” she says.

Her return to Costa Rica and the reunion with Mejía Godoy on stage, reminds her of the first exile, when in 1976 they met and shared their passion for art, but also actions of resistance against the dictatorship of Somoza Debayle.

Despite her new exile, Belli continues to write. She announced that “cooking in her literary kitchen” is a new novel that integrates parts of her experience as an exile and the resistance to the Somoza dictatorship in the seventies, and now that of Daniel Ortega, in addition to the feeling of frustration of seeing where that revolution ended.

“I keep writing because my word and I are one and the same. Wherever I go, my word goes with me.”

In an interview with Esta Noche, Belli talks about her upcoming poetry and song concert, her second exile, the longing to return, and her next novel that she is writing amid the pain produced by the crisis in Nicaragua.

The poetry and song recital will be held at the National Auditorium of the Children’s Museum, in San José, Costa Rica, next Sunday, April 30. Tickets are on sale online on the museum’s website.

Read more from Nicaragua here on Havana Times