Berso sa Metro: La poesía viaja en Jeepney.

¡Hola a todos! The topic of culture is interesting. When one talks about it, the usual things come to mind--art, music, dance, poetry, literature, film and the list goes on. These can easily be described as subjective or unquantifiable things. In short, culture is all up in the air. A painting could easily portray a million things to a million different people, as could a symphony or a haiku. You can't measure it with a plastic ruler or a barometer, you just know it's there and it sparks something in you--kind of like oxygen. Okay maybe not, bad analogy ha-ha.

If you think about it hard enough, it somehow begs the question: what do we really mean by culture? In university, sociology tells us that culture is the exchange of symbol. In simpler words, culture is shared meaning within a community. Culture is the thing we jointly recognize, as a people or as a society. In the context of Metro Manila for example, the jeepney is one such symbol. For a Filipino, it could be a) a mode of transportation, b) an obstacle on the road, c) a sign of Filipino ingenuity and anything else you could think of. In a nutshell, jeepneys are everywhere and they could mean a myriad of things to anyone.

On April 17th, exactly a week before Día del Libro on the 24th, Instituto Cervantes will mount the Jeepney Poetry Reading Tour in three different locations.



A good number of poets featuring their originals works will be traveling the city in an electric jeepney--designed in the spirit of the Berso sa Metro campaign. It is going to be a recital spread in three different locations throughout the entire day, a celebration of the joy of literature held all over different corners of the city.

This project is going to be an extension of the Berso sa Metro campaign, brought to us in 2007 by Instituto Cervantes de Manila. After conquering all three lines of the metro (with our Bersos present in MRT, LRT 1 & 2), this could possibly be the next step in spreading the joy of Spanish and Filipino poetry. With the combination of our Spanish heritage, Filipino love for poetry and the ubiquitous jeepney--this is real innovation and true creation of culture. What can I say? We do what we can, ha-ha I'm kidding. In hindsight, Berso sa Metro is one of our biggest and most successful projects. It has already been established as a symbol so recognizable, you could almost taste the culture.

Stay tuned to Cultura en Manila for more updates on this event. I hear there is a contest afoot with big prizes, I will keep you posted. In the meantime, become a fan of Berso sa Metro on Facebook.com! Y tú, ¿qué opinas? ¡Hasta pronto!