CAMAGÜEY.- Within the wide range of spaces for promotion in this city that aspires to the international status of literary city, the Sóngoro cosongo gathering, by the writer Jesús Zamora Ávila and the troubadour Antonio Batista stands out.

It adopted the title of the second collection of poems published by Nicolás Guillén, from Camagüey recognized as the National Poet of Cuba. This is also how a literary cafe located in the central Republic street is identified.

The club already has a bimonthly frequency at the Ateneo Vietnam Cultural Complex, a facility reopened on August 13, 2019 with new furniture, the aforementioned cafe and the Emilio Ballagas conference room.

Since that date, the increase in attractive offers has led to an over-compliance trend for an entity that had not met the sales plan for eight years.

The resizing of the bookstores in the territory is notable due to the new management of the Provincial Center for Books and Literature (CPLL) of Camagüey, in the last three years. That implied a greater approach to the authors.

The writer Jesús Zamora himself, in a statement for the Alero special bulletin No. 8, of December 2019, praised the CPLL for stimulating the meeting of writers with each social group. He himself was able to take up the club Equipararte, with the associations of people with disabilities.

By strengthening this link, the institution received and promoted more proposals from characterized clubs; therefore, once this debt has been settled, it is worth looking at what the authors do with the spaces granted.

A magnificent example is found in the duo of Zamora and Batista. The idea came from the troubadour, and both have complemented each other in such a way that they are popular with the public and with guests, and also contribute to the pocket of the CPLL.

One of its attractions makes the difference. The gift of books arose spontaneously with the first guest, Evelin Queipo. She brought titles from the Ácana Editorial catalog. The initiative remained in the profile of the space.

Since then, Zamora has bought as gifts. He does not consider the outlay a loss. From his copyright for each activity he takes a part for this kind of investment in favor of reading and the visibility of the authors.

If we go to the numbers harvested by the hosts, of the eleven times it has taken place, a total of 70 copies of 15 titles have been distributed with the credit of 11 authors, all equivalent to 357 Cuban pesos. This does not include books brought by guests.

Sóngoro cosongo was born on February 14 and immediately saw its takeoff truncated by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was resumed in July when Camagüey went to the recovery stage. At that time, Lester Vargas, a 10-year-old boy exploring the tenth and other strophic forms, was introduced.

In that reboot, Lester read his poem El Romance Antillano, motivated by a classic by Guillén within the scope of children's literature: A paper boat walks through the Antilles sea.

The work of the journalist and National Poet of Cuba is a permanent reminder. The gathering always opens with the reading of his text, and Batista indistinctly interprets the verses of * Rosa, tú melancólica *, and * Igual que el mar *.

As of August, Sóngoro cosongo achieved two monthly frequencies and a varied parade of Camagüey authors: Yunexis Nobalbo, Yoandra Santana, Mariela Pérez-Castro, Ernesto Agüero and Elías Henoc from Ciego de Ávila.

He also shared with Alejandro González, Lino Torres, Martha Núñez and Luisa Alejo, of whom there were no copies in bookstores, hence the option of printing stories and poems to incorporate them into the inevitable gift of the Ácana catalog. It should be clarified that these books are not the courtesy books available to the Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda Promotion Center, but are purchased by Zamora and Batista as regular customers.

Sóngoro cosongo was born with the sign of love and the first indicator of its effectiveness emerges in the goals of its creators. Batista has set out to score ten poems by Guillén. He also puts chords to lyrical subjects of countrymen. He already made the song Isla en mi cuerpo, by Luis Álvarez; and Rare merchandise, by Evelin Queipo.

Zamora takes the accounting of the space with a pencil point, expands the promotion on the Facebook social network, and is projected according to the guest so that the experience is pleasant and surprising also for a regular audience that has to take advantage of the privilege of the prices of bookstores, since the current monetary system has not changed the rate for books on shelves.

The gathering offers its good energy to the new year. It coincided that the first guest of 2021 was Evelin Queipo, for recently winning the José María Heredia National Poetry Prize.

At the closure, while Zamora's mother distributed The Memories Machine and A House Without a Name, both by Evelin, she with her convincing promoter grace, said that literature takes away the headache and added: “I hope they go away with a book so that they are never sad or alone or sick ”.

Without a doubt, second and fourth Fridays of each month, from 4:00 pm, Zamora and Batista write valuable pages for the Camagüey file, a territory that also aspires to the official recognition of the Cradle of Cuban Literature, because here in 1608 the epic poem Mirror of patience was writen.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez