«Decimando» in Aldabón.

The workshop of the tenth written «With your eyes mine» responds to the Matanzas design of exalting the spinel as part of the literary history of this land, whose cultivators boasted such relevant names as the Milanés brothers, Agustín Acosta and Carilda Oliver Labra plus a generation of writers and improvisers who came to turn Matanzas into a national exponent of this poetic composition.

In the second decade of the present century, a palpitation is felt among the bards that drives the realization of this workshop, aimed at perfecting the written tenth and directed by Aldabón Editions, the Provincial Center of Books and Literature and the Municipal Directorate of Culture.

Writer Noel Oliva, winner of the Eliecer Lazo Award, also known in the literary world for his poems dedicated to both children and adults, was chosen as the guest of the month.

Oliva offered a recital of his latest spinelas, distinguished by a reflective breath about nature and children’s spirituality, in addition to adding some verses of humorous tone.

Daniel Cruz Bermúdez, director of the publishing house and fervent decimistas since his youthful years in Sancti Spíritus until his consolidation in the Athens of Cuba, spoke about the value of this stanza within the literary movement of the province, since its ancestry extends to several municipalities, with old and new talents that are added to this genre, so particular for its rhythm, rhyme and metrics, associated to the Creole roots of the national culture.

As an exercise of the previous workshop, the poets were called to elaborate the famous ten verses, from the notebook entitled «Agua de lavanda», by Elvira García Mora, to which challenge Maylan Álvarez and Fara Madrigal responded, in an intertextual game, emanated by the lyrical approach of the narrations of the author from Cardenas, who received a mention in the 1993 David Award for her novelette «El cinturón del tiempo», published almost twenty years later by Editorial Matanzas in 2006 and remembered for the book «Historia de amor para adolescentes».

Much was said about the tenth and its perspectives in this workshop along with the possibility of increasing its study based on the great Cuban poets and the new wave of trends that is glimpsed in this cultured and inspired land.

Written by María Elena Bayón