Return to Idoto 3 starts today

THE activities slated for the 3rd edition of the Return to Idoto will kick off in earnest today, with a Welcome Evening, which will hold in Awka, the Anambra State capital at 7.pm.

  This was contained in a statement released by the organisers of the poetry festival  in honour of the late Christopher Okigbo, an Ojoto, Anambra-born world class poet, teacher and librarian, who died in 1967 while fighting for Biafra’s independence.

  The event is held by Awka Literary Society, which is an international society of writers, literature lovers and the creative arts.

  Giving full details of the event’s fixtures, the statement reads in part, “Return to Idoto 3 sets off with “A Welcome Evening” by the Awka Literary Society at Finotel Hotel, Awka, by 7p.m on Thursday, August 19.

  “By 12: noon the following day, Friday, August 20, the poets will visit the Owere-Ezukala Cave where their voices will reverberate as echos in the chamber. Same day, after a courtesy call on the king of Ojoto, Igwe Gerald Mbamalu, the poets will by 7p.m., congregate at  Okigbo’s residence for a bonfire night of posthumous birthday celebration tagged, “Words on Fire.”

  Further, it reads, “Saturday, August 21, by 12: noon, the train will take the long trip from Okigbo’s natal home to the Idoto River. They will walk the same hallowed grounds Okigbo the poet, priest, prophet and pilgrim had walked on in his lifetime. They will walk, contemplate their art, and pause as they reverently observe the “Seven Stations of Words.

  “By 8:00pm same evening, the poets will be hosted to a dinner by a patron of the Awka Literary Society, Prof. (Justice) P.N.C. Umeadi, former Chief Judge of Anambra State at Eze Otosi’s country home, Agu-Ukwu, Nri, in a ceremony tagged “Reading at the Cradle.”