The heat of a Sunday afternoon in Caracas finds some reliefe in the fresh breeze that goes through the monumental concrete spaces of the Teresa Carreño Theater, as it gathers all the exciting trepidation of the International Book Fair of Venezuela, 2015 FILVEN. Under its shades, thousands of visitors, of all ages, find shelter when coming to the fair moved by different motivations. You may visit the book fair and find something you were not looking for, or just as a hound after the trail of a coveted prey. This is the case of a French teacher who, after watching an announcement on the opening of a book stand on Haiti literature in the book fair this year, expected anxiously for the inauguration of the fair to encounter with the work of the men of letters from that island, who have also enrich, with their verses, the French-speaking literature. One of her favorites is the poet George Castera, an essential exponent of the literature in that country, the first to lend Simon Bolivar a hand during his historic liberation deed, and always lashed by the harsh sun, furious Caribbean winds and, mainly, by injustice during its whole history. Therefore, this teacher took with her three of her students, interested in poetry, to show them, and the other students she would see in her Monday lesson, that the French-speaking communities constitute a wide territory, not only limited to the French hexagon, as well as a tool that also serves itself from the beauty of the verb to denounce painful realities. This teacher admires specially George Castera for being an activist in the social struggle for a fairer world. Nonetheless, the work of this poet in essence (he has never penetrated into the narrative territory) is not devoid of the beauty in the verse’s cadence; indeed, his last book of poems honors the sensuality of the body lying on a landscape of sand and salty water; of love and its ability to transform life into a more alive, happier, place. And thanks to the FILVEN many will be prvileged to know, even by the sense of touch, his work.
