NELA
RIO
_
"Argentine poet, author,
artist makes Canada proud"
Artículo
publicado en BASE, the Magazine for Global Canadians (vol. 9, no
2, marzo de 2007)
_
Nela Rio is
Argentina's pride. But she also does Canada proud. A poet, writer, artist,
and literary critic, Rio became a Canadian citizen in 1977. She had taught
Spanish American literature for more than thirty years at St. Thomas University,
in Fredericton, before retiring a few years ago. But now she continues_her
research on women poets, particularly on the 16th Century Dominican poet
Sor Leonor de Ovando,_while
she works tirelessly on UN projects that promote the arts and culture.
Women are the central figures in Rio's work, and solidarity among them
is clearly evident in the situations in which they suffer from violence,
whether in the public world of political repression, cultural marginalization,
stereotyping due to gender and age, or the private world of domestic abuse.
In other settings, Rio concentrates on the human relationships, the passion,
tenderness and understanding found in the intimate space, in which both
the woman and the man become the subject and the object of love. In many
of her works, Rio shows you the ugliness of ideological repression; the
pathos of illness and aging; love and sexuality; revision of the use of
traditional myths and the creation of new ones […]. Rio's […] works are
many […] and some of them include The
Space of Light-a selection of her poetry and prose;_During
Nights That Undress Other Nights_and
others such as_Voices
for Peace_to
which she has contributed alongside other eminent poets. Many of her works
are published by_Broken
Jaw Press,_Canada.
[…]Rio has been a finalist in thirteen international literary contests
and her poems and short stories have been published in anthologies and
journals in Spain, Argentina, Chile, Puerto. Rico, Mexico, Uruguay, Poland,
Brazil, Honduras, the United States and Canada. She has given much of her
time to cultural advocacy. […] She has successfully organized four_annual
consecutive international exhibitions_of_Poster
Poems of Ibero American Poets_with
the participation of more than 150 poets in each one of them. She is the
founder of the_International
Poetry and Art Exhibition: Outspoken Art/Arte Claro_[…]
Rio's community work reaches out to immigrants and refugees, advocating
for peace, understanding and respect. She has also been a speaker for human
rights and has presented several papers on the subject. She has collaborated
with the UN on several projects including the observance of the Decade
for Culture of Peace. The program promotes linguistic pluralism and multilingualism;
poetry, art and theatre workshops for children, public awareness campaigns,
festivals and competitions. […]
_
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