Sardam Interdisciplinary Literature Festival celebrates 10 years

For logophiles and lovers of literature, Sardam Festival is a highly anticipated event. It arrives annually and is filled with readings, presentations of writers and creative workshops dedicated to the craft of writing and its many forms. This September a special anniversary edition is being prepared as Sardam marks ten years of existence. Apart from a three-day festival in Limassol, Sardam is extending its celebrations with an event in Athens and participation in the Limassol Book Fair.

September 23, 24 and 25 are the festival dates and the main event on Saturday 24 happens in collaboration with Rialto Theatre, hosted at the venue for the first time. Important guests from previous editions as well as some new additions to the festival such as poetry slam champions from France and Cyprus will be involved.

Similar to previous editions, writers-performers and other artists from Cyprus and abroad will share original experiences of writing, reading, as well as exciting literary performances, through a variety of acts, workshops and parallel events. Common ground will be the combination of literature and words with traditional and modern means of expression such as theatre, technology, sound, spoken word, visual arts, sound poetry and video poetry.

During the Main Event some participants from previous editions will collaborate in duets and group acts, and students of the department of Fine Arts of the Cyprus University of Technology, under the guidance of the visual artist and professor Adonis Volanakis, will create visual sculptures which will be exhibited in the theatre, while the sound/music of the event will be composed by Acapella Solo Loop. At the beginning of the event, there will be a screening of a short video dedicated to Sardam’s 10th anniversary, featuring participants from previous editions, created by Constantinos Constantinou and Julia Georgiadou.

Also within the festival’s agenda are two workshops and two parallel events. On September 23, Hannah Silva from the UK will hold the Looping Language workshop combining poetry with the use of loops and loop stations. The second workshop will be held in Greek and online as Vasilis Amanatides from Greece presents a creative writing workshop titled Our Self through the Other.

Parallel events will be hosted at Art Studio 55 on September 25. Split into two parts, the event is called The Poets’ Sounds: Creating and Presenting New Works of Speech-Music Literature and takes place in cooperation with Lettrétage in Berlin. It is a performance which will travel to several places in the world before landing in Cyprus.

Beginning the evening is a poetry reading by writers Tone Avenstroup (Norway), Eduard Escoffet (Spain/Catalonia), Katalin Ladik (Hungary) and Morten Søndergaard (Denmark), followed by a short discussion. Then a speech concert will unfold, presented by the sprechbohrer Ensemble.

The festival will end with a Meet the Artists closing party following the parallel event. Yet that’s not everything that makes up the 10^th-anniversary edition. Come October 22 and Sardam will go on a mini tour to Athens. Writers-artists from Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Austria, Argentina, Chile and Germany will host a literary evening in the Greek capital. Then, on November 24-26 as the first Limassol Book Fair takes place, Sardam will present a short programme to continue the literature nights and connect with even more bibliophiles.

10^th Sardam Interdisciplinary Literature Festival

Anniversary edition of festival with readings, performances, workshops and events. September 23-25. Throughout Limassol. www.sardamcy.wordpress.com. Facebook page: @sardamfestival