It is promise as a festival exchanging poetry, landscape, culture and food and wine and unites Lanzarote with other territories where the wine horizon is vibrant. What’s not to like about the Vino Poesia Festival, especially when it also tells us it will showcase Canarian and Basque poets reciting at incomparable natural settings.
On this occasion, the wine regions of the island of Lanzarote and La Rioja Alavesa come together in a poetry festival that passes through two wine regions. So, Vino Poesia offers two regions with a great agricultural and cultural identity that celebrate multiculturalism and food and wine with a series of activities.
La Rioja is one of the most important wine regions in Spain, known for its quality wines and rich history in wine production. The Rioja designation of origin is one of the oldest and most recognized in Spain, and is home to some of the most famous wineries in the country. Tourism in La Rioja has experienced significant growth in recent years, with more and more visitors interested in exploring the wineries and tasting the region’s wines.
La Rioja is famous for its red wines made from the Tempranillo, Garnacha, Graciano and Mazuelo varieties. These wines have great body, structure and body, with notes of ripe fruits and spices. The white wines of La Rioja are also highly appreciated and are made mainly with the Viura and Malvasía varieties.
This month, November 2023, sees Lanzarote and Álava come together to celebrate the 1st Edition of the Wine and Poetry Festival. A festival with two venues: Lanzarote and Álava. And with two names: Vinopoesía in Lanzarote and Ardopoesía in Álava. “Ardo” means “wine” in Basque.
The Festival, by whatever name, unites poetry and viticulture: poets, culture and wine.
Three activities have taken place earlier this month at the Basque headquarters and another three activities are still to be heldat the Canary Island headquarters. With the participation of three wineries from the island of Lanzarote combined with three wineries from La Rioja Alavesa where we can taste their wines.
The first half of Vino Poesia, categorised under three headings of Music, Hiking and Gastronemy, and all included poetry and wine.
These took place last weekend in Alava with the music event being held at Cosme Palacio Winery on Friday November 3es with Poetry accompanied by music by Lanzarote guitarist and poet Domingo Corujo Tejera. The wines tasted were supplied from the host Cosme Palacio de Laguardia Winery and the guest winery El Grifo de Lanzarote.
The hiking event took place on Saturday 4th November from 11.00 am following a poetic route that led to Bideona Winery along which the participating poets recited through the vineyards of Villabuena, where the group enjoyed the wines of the host winery Bideona de Villabuena and the guest winery La Geria de Lanzarote.
The Gastronemy Event was held at 6.00 pm at Alútiz Winery and offered Gastronomic tasting of Canarian products, amalgamated with poetry and wines from the host winery Alútiz de Samaniego and the guest winery Vega de Yuco.
The events now move across to Lanzarote when the Music, poetry and wine section will be held at El Grifo Winery, from 7.00 pm on Friday 24th November. The poetry will be accompanied by traditional Basque music with Mertxe Fernández de Bastida (trikitixa) and Kepa Pinedo (tambourine) and Canarian music with Alexis Lemes (timple) in the oldest winery in the Canary Islands, El Grifo. With the addition of a wine tasting from the host winery El Grifo de Lanzarote and the guest winery Cosme Palacio de Laguardia.
The Hiking, poetry and wine event is to take place at La Geria Winery, where poetry lovers will follow a poetic route with interpretation of the landscape by Senderismo Lanzarote and with the participating poets reciting through the vineyards of La Geria, There the crowd can also enjoy the wines of the host winery La Geria de Lanzarote and the guest winery Bideona de Villabuena. This will be staged on Saturday 25th November from 10.00am.
Later that same day at 7.00 pm Lanzarote will bring the Vino Poesia Festival to a close with Gastronomy, poetry and wine. At the Municipal Theater of Teguise with Vega de Yuco. Gastronomic tasting of Basque products, combined with a poetry recital and wine tasting from the host Winery Vega de Yuco and the guest Winery Alútiz de Samaniego.
We have featured Mercedes R. Minguela a number of times in Sidetracks And Detours and she has become a family friend as my wife attended for several years the yoga classes facilitated by the writer. Mercedes is not only a wonderful writer but also is a major player in creating the profile of poetry on Lanzarote. She was very much involved, earlier this year, in the collating and publishing of Parablas Para Toas, with Berbel and we then reported on a very successful launch event on these pages.
Mercedes is one of the poets who will be e at the Lanzarote performance at Vino Poesia on Lanzarote next weekend and she is in good company.
Mercedes is a Graduate in journalism, yoga teacher and poet. She was born in Segovia but from a very young age she moved to Madrid, where she first worked in regional newspapers and later she was marketing director of a company, combining her time with writing and yoga. She currently lives in Lanzarote where she practices and teaches Yoga and writes poetry, because she wants to make in herself the change that she would like to see in the world. He has published his poetry in various poetry anthologies such as: Espiral de Poesia7 (Lanzarote), 100 Poetas en Mayo (Vitoria), Versos Volcanes y Viento (Lanzarote), “Canarias en Verso, voices for eight islands” (Abra Canarias Cultural- La Palma ). Participation in “From ancestors to endemisms” pictorial-literary project (Gran Canaria). Director of the Lanzarote Poetry Festival “Verses, Volcanoes and Wind”.
We will alos be reporting sonn on a lecture recently given by Mercedes called Stripping The Words Bare, so watch this space.
Thorn Guinea is a Poet and rhapsode born in Vitoria/Gasteiz on July 7, 1961. Member of the Poetas en Red group since 2009. Member of the organizing team of the International Poets in May Festival since 2016, of which she is coordinator of “One Hundred Poets in May”, “Crystal Pages”, “Poetic Concert” and “Poetry in the Murals”. In 1978 she won the first “Year 2000” poetry prize with the poem “Senderos”. In 2008 she participated in the “Vedruna Story Contest” with the story “The Grandfather” with which she won first prize. She is the author of the books: 2015 “Desojando poppies” (poetry), 2017 “Stiletto-heeled shoes” (poetry), 2020 “The game of life” (story), 2021 “All the faces of the moon” (poetry ) and 2023 “A notebook in the suitcase” (poetry). Participant in several Anthologies: One Hundred Poets in May (Vitoria Gasteiz) 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023. *2008 “Five Voices” edited by the Vitoria Gasteiz City Council. Participant in the meeting of poets on the Internet: 2011 Sigüenza, 2012 Bilbao and Peñíscola, 2013 Madrid, 2014 Calatayud, 2015 Barcelona, 2016 Cáceres, 2017 Valladolid, 2018 Salamanca, 2019 Castro Urdiales, 2020 Toledo, 2022 Alboraya (Valencia), 2023 And ujar (Jaén). Other publications: *2019 Speak Cultural Association / Valladolid City Council, “Here to free the times” and “She, equality”, *2021 “Cuenca, unique and magical” (Cuenca), and *2022 MIGAS Association “Poets for peace ” (Badajoz).
phto 3 Manuel Concepcion is Canarian poet and narrator residing in Lanzarote. In 2011 he published “Poems of love and life”. From 2013 is his collection of poems “From end to end”. In 2016 he published “The Friendly Sea”, a novel, and in 2017, “El Cogedero and Other Canarian Stories”. His latest novel “The Power of Their Looks” is from 2022. He is a regular in the “Spirals of poets around the world” (4th, 5th, 6th and 7th). He has also taken part in the publications, “Short stories for boring couples, or boring stories for brief couples” (2018), “Monsters and Superheroes, earthquake stories from the Canary Islands” (2019) and Hombres 88. He participated in “Poets in Mayo”, Vitoria-Gastéiz (2022 and 2023), in the I Lanzarote Poetry Festival (2022) and in the I Baltasar Espinosa Poetry Festival (Gáldar 2023), with poems in all its anthologies, as well as in the recent “ Words for everyone.
Domingo Corujo Tejera is, composer, poet and writer from the island of Lanzarote. At the age of 14, he received, together with the Ajei Folkloric Group of San Bartolomé, the first prize at the Santander International Dance Festival of 1960. At the age of 17 he emigrated to Venezuela where he continued to be linked to music, learning guitar with the maestro Antonio Lauro. He perfects his studies in Madrid with Regino Sáinz. He teaches guitar classes in several centers in Caracas. He returned to the Canary Islands and founded the Domingo Corujo Music School in Tenerife, which remains active for more than two decades. He teaches music classes at the University of La Laguna and is a classical guitarist around the world with the Cervantes Institute: Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco,…After a tour of residencies in different places (Cuba and Castilla-La Mancha) returns to his native Lanzarote where he continues working tirelessly on his grand guitar and on new compositions.
The Cola guitar won the European Invention of the Year Award in 1995 at the European Invention Show in Brussels. He has published a treatise on traditional Canarian music with a great investigation of traditional music with scores and music records. Various poetry books have seen the light in different book formats such as “Flores del Estercolero” from Idea editions or the “Poemaphorismos” collection. He published a book about Víctor Fernández Gopar, the salt poet from the island of Lanzarote. His novel “Behind the Big House” was published by the publication service of the Arrecife de Lanzarote City Council. Reading as a child the greguerías (humor plus metaphor) of Ramón Gómez de La Serna motivated him to try to express as much as possible with the minimum number of words in his poems that he himself judges as micro musical pieces.
Quick Perera, born in Lanzarote, is Teacher, poet and writer. She has never published solo; Some of her stories and poems have been collected in more than twenty anthologies with other authors. She has participated in Poetry Festivals in Lanzarote, La Palma, Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Vitoria and Fuerteventura. She has also participated in some Poetic Spiral on the island of Lanzarote. She collaborated with one of her poems in Mujeres88 for social purposes. She participated in + DE CIEN ESCRITOS A PADRÓN with a narrative text and another poetic one titled Las Molineras about the painting by Antonio Padrón that bears the same name. She published a poem in the anthology Abrazos a Benahoare in which authors from all the islands participated for solidarity purposes with the victims of the island of La Palma.
The children’s story Los Diabletes was published in an educational booklet about the figure of Los Diabletes de Teguise. She was part of the Jury of the II La Balsa de Piedra novel competition and has also been part of short story, poetry and letter competitions. She has written several children’s stories and poems, which she has not published. As well as stories and poems. She always goes when asked to read some of her stories in some schools and institutes on the island of Lanzarote.
A poet from Lagrán, province of Álava (1960). Rosi Puellas is gifted with limitless perception, a devourer of books and always ready to write what she experiences, feels or imagines. According to her words, her love story with words began with stories and from there to poetry there is only one step. In 2016 she won first prize in the V ACCU Spain Story Contest, with her work: “(Involuntary) center of the universe.” She has collaborated and published poems in various anthologies such as “Poetas en Mayo” from 2017 to the present, where also this year 2023 she has coordinated the poetry activity taken to the senior residences in Vitoria and Araba. Ella She published a book of stories and poems in 2022 under the title: “Teselas” (Nimbo editions). In this year 2023, she has organized an artistic poetic meeting in Lagrán (Álava) along with other artists and poets.
Jose Laconcecion is a teacher and poet born in Lapuebla de Labarca (Álava) in 1955. In the Fundación Vital poetry competitions he achieved third place and a second prize with his literary work in Basque. Member of the team of the International Poetry Festival “Poetas en mayo” in Vitoria Gasteiz. Collaborator, participant and presenter of various literary events by Alava authors. He collaborated with Amparo Montero in an in-person and online literature course at the Vitoria-Gasteiz House of Culture. He gave colloquium talks in various venues such as the Hogar Navarro, Casa Aragón, Casa de Cultura, Centro Cívico Aldave, Residences for the elderly…He has published the following works: “Blow by blow, kiss by kiss” (2018), “Various verses“ (2020) Tarqus publishing house and “Diverse verses“ (2022) with Tarqus publishing house. Currently he is in the preparation of the third collection of poems in the trilogy: “Last diverse verses or the third time is lucky.” Since 2017 he has been a participant in the collective poetry collections of Poetas en Mayo and Centro Cívico Aldabe.
Gnacio Romero is a native of the island of Lanzarote, being born in 1978. He is a Bbiologist, popularizer and writer, In his literary aspect, he has published books on environmental topics and poetry collections: “Lanzarote, hiking guide” (2014, Ed. Remotas). Hiking guide Tías trail network (2016, Tías City Council). “Island of Lobos, nature and history” (2017, Ed. Remotas). “Corners of Lanzarote. Geography and poetry” (2020, Ed. Remotas). Tinajo Hiking Network Guide (2022, Tinajo City Council). “Browsing between the lines” (2022, Remote Ed.). He has collaborated with other authors on other book publications: Ecolabels in “Theory and Practice of Environmental Education” (2004, Interuniversity Ed.). The fruit trees of La Geria in “Lanzarote and wine” (2013, Ed. Remotas). He has participated in various poetic anthologies: Espiral 7. Proyecto spiral poética (202, Ed. Puentepalo). Hugs to Benahoare. Poetry anthology to La Palma (2021, Abra Canarias Cultural). Wind, volcanoes and verses (2022, Lanzarote Island Poetry Festival). 100 poets in May (2023, Tarqus editorial). Canary Islands in verse. Voices for the eight islands (2023, Abra Canarias Cultural). He has prefaced two research publications on toponymy: “Diccionario de toponyms de Lanzarote” by Agustín Pallarés (2014, Ed. Remotas) and “La toponimia de San Bartolomé” by Esaú Pérez
Another important figure in this festival that has bridged an ocean to adjoin its two venues is known as The Collector (or Scavenger) but his real name is Pedro Benasco, who has extensive experience and specific training in topics related to wine. He belongs to the tasting committee of the DO Vinos de Lanzarote. He has a WSET Levels 2 and 3 qualification. He is a trainer of the DO Montilla Moriles.
As a published poet and a a genuine art lover I applaud the work undertaken by the people mentioned in this piece,. Together and individually they define the optimistic, can-do nature of Lanzarote and its people. We value the arts so highly here, not only because of the fabulous legacy left to us by the incredible Cesar Manrique but also because of this later generation of artists, like those mentioned above, who continue to explore, divert and perpetuate that legacy.
They so deserve our support.
