Freddy Niagara Fonseca
ABOUT THE POET
Poet, narrator, baritone and impresario Freddy Niagara Fonseca hails from South-America. He has absorbed the histories and cultures of Greece, France, Spain, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and the United States through his travels; worked in graphic design and banking in Amsterdam; studied voice and Italian, and worked in films in Rome, Italy.
He has read extensively in five languages including tens of thousands of poems by authors from Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, Italy, Spanish speaking countries, and the US, feeling a particular resonance with and a link to American poetry.
As a young adult, he actually disliked poetry. While visiting Rome, Italy, he was moved by a pedestal inscription on a statue of Lord Byron in Villa Borghese Park, and wrote his first poem the next day.
Freddy, who is an expressive performer, has publicly recited his poems, reflective of his visits to various exotic locales, in concert with the accompaniment of musicians, numerous times. In 1990, he staged, produced, and participated in a Dance, Rhyme & Rhythm Extravaganza in Fairfield, Iowa, reciting and dancing to his own poetry with a cast of 30 dancers, accompanied on piano. He lives in Fairfield, Iowa.
His poems have appeared in the US, Canada and England in The Dryland Fish—An Anthology of Contemporary Iowa Poets, Tower Poetry Society, The Eclectic Muse, The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Candelabrum Poetry Magazine, The Fairfield Ledger, The Iowa Source, Pivot, Inquiring Mind, WinningWriters.com, and Passive Fists—An Anthology by Poets for Peace. Two of Freddy’s poems are on permanent display in public buildings in Fairfield, IA, i.e. Revelations Cafe & Bookstore, and the Fairfield Courthouse.
In December 2004, Freddy created the Candlelight Reading Series in order to bring entertaining poetry readings with inventive programming and aesthetics on a variety of themes.
The main focus has been on presenting world poetry, classical as well as contemporary and of all cultures, styles and eras. The series regularly invites excellent readers, poets, musicians, dancers, actors, mime artists, story tellers, song writers, comedians, etc.
Freddy has made it his mission to revitalize the oral poetry traditions by modifying them for modern audiences while opening up the gateways of feeling and meaning fearlessly. His fondest desire is to bring poetry back to its rightful home, in the heart of all people; to popularize poetry, using as many imaginative ways as possible.
PUBLISHED IN THIS ENDURING GIFT
Awestruck at Niagara Falls
The Language of the Trees
The Doe
On a Medieval Painting of the Fall of Man
The New York City Zoo
Statue of an Enraged Lion
Carnival in Rio!
Poetry Dances, Olé!
Books
Giant Sequoia – A Hymn
Fire Dance – An Invocation of the Light
