In the town of Tetovo, at the foot of the Sharr Mountains in North Macedonia, languages from across the world resound around the local cultural centre, the venue of the Ditet e Naimit (Days of Naim) international poetry festival, named in honour of the 19th Albanian Renaissance poet Naim Frasheri.
Dominican, American, Italian, Austrian, Polish, Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish, Croat, Bosnian, Montenegrin and Macedonian poets recite their works, which are then rendered in Albanian by local actor Arsim Kaleci. Albanian poets perform too.
Addressing the audience, festival director and poet Shaip Emerllahu said poetry “affirms diversity as a common human asset”. The festival, he said, has become “a living bridge between cultures and hearts”.
Almost three decades since its founding, the poetry festival is a fixture of the arts scene in Tetovo, a predominantly Albanian-populated town in the west of North Macedonia, its previous prizewinners including New York poet and spoken word performer George Wallace and the late Albanian novelist and poet Ismail Kadare.
In turbulent times, in a turbulent corner of the globe, poetry has long been at the centre of Emerllahu’s struggle to assert the rights of Albanians to enjoy their language and culture, across the former Yugoslavia and, more recently, in North Macedonia.
“We affirm our culture based on our traditions,” Emerllahu told BIRN. “Our goal is to make the state more harmonious.”
