Workshops and performances to look forward to at SARDAM Festival

It is time for Cyprus’ leading (and only?!) literature festival to return. In just a few days, SARDAM will fill Limassol’s streets and cultural venues with workshops in English and Greek, performances and discussions uniting Cyprus’ logophiles with esteemed guests from around the world.

“Having played a catalytic role in the development of literary performance in Cyprus, the International Interdisciplinary Literature Festival SARDAΜ returns for its 13th year,” say organisers. “Literature and speech are combined with contemporary or traditional means of expression, such as theatre, sound/music, spoken word, contemporary dance, sound poetry, video poetry, technology, the visual arts and so on.”

Festival dates are set for Thursday to Sunday. Workshops will span all of the festival’s dates, sprinkled in between performances, group events, open mic nights and closing ceremonies hosting awarded and emerging writers and artists from Cyprus, Greece, the USA, Ireland, Finland and Iceland.

Next Sunday, an additional evening, featuring an open mic and a closing event, will be held for the first time (starting at 6pm), in collaboration with The Bad Poetry Social Club from Greece and KENO Publications, including a group performance by the five members of The Bad Poetry Social Club and an intimate live gig by the musician and songwriter Lefteris Moumtzis (Freedom Candlemaker).

Opportunities to participate and learn about the ins and outs of the literary world by professionals are offered as the festival also expands its workshop programme this year. Two workshops at The Old Vinegar Factory are taking place on Thursday and Friday in the afternoon and two at Synergeio theatre space on Saturday and Sunday in the morning.

Thursday’s is a poetry workshop with Danez Smith, the festival’s Guest of Honour. Titled Personal Machines: Invented Form, the workshop will invite participants to explore traditional and contemporary forms of poetry such as bop, duplex, burning haibun and Molotov sonnet, resulting with writing poetic forms and poems.

The following day’s workshop is a Sound Poetry and Voice Workshop by Finn Maja Jantar. Warming up bodies and voices with vocal exercises and improvisation techniques, the session will explore ways to lift the text from the page and bring it into the performance space.

The first group event will take place on the same evening with performances by Hlín Leifsdóttir, Morton (Iceland / Greece) Konstantinos Papacharalampos (Greece / UK), Fisherwomxn (Cyprus), Tuğçe Tekhanli (Cyprus), Alexandros Adamidis and Stelios Andronikou (Cyprus), Danez Smith (USA) and a visual installation by Anastasia Melandinou.

The workshops will continue on Saturday with Alex Adil’s Catharsis: a creative workshop. This interdisciplinary workshop explores catharsis (emotional release through creative action) as a path to healing and resistance. Inspired by The Body Keeps the Score (Bessel van der Kolk), it recognises that trauma resides in both the mind and the body. Through writing, movement and visual expression, participants will process personal and collective crises. Emphasising process over outcome, the workshop encourages the destruction and reconstruction of the work as a metaphor for transformation

In the evening, Tasos Sagris & WHODOES (Greece), Evi Lampropoulou (Greece), Kalia Maliali (Cyprus), Maria Philippou (Cyprus), Stephen James Smith (Ireland) and Anastasia Melandinou will present the second group event.

On the final day, the Spoken Word – Slam Poetry Workshop will take place. It will cover topics such as creating a text, staging, writing, performing and selecting the music, concluding with a focus on live presentation on stage and its requirements. Unlike, the rest of the festival’s workshops, this session will take place in Greek.

To close off the festival, the Bad Poetry Social Club and Cyprus’ KENO Publications will put on an Open Mic Night with a first come, first served basis. The event is open to all who wish to perform and will include sets by The Bad Poetry Social Club and local musician Lefteris Moumtzis.

13th International Interdisciplinary Literature Festival SARDAM

Workshops, group performances, music and literary events. September 25-28. Limassol. https://sardamfestival.com/, https://www.soldoutticketbox.com/el/event/sardam-festival-2025