An international poetry festival that has summoned more than 80 poets from 50 countries started on Thursday in the southern Macedonian city Struga.

"Five decades in a row in each August, this city and this country have been hosting the most prominent names of world poetry," Minister of Culture Elizabeta Kanceska Milevsak said at the opening ceremony.

The minister said poetry might not be able to alter the world, but it was a powerful catalyst to eliminate barriers that set people apart and could bring nations together, as the Struga poetry festival had proved.

During the four-day event, a poetry recital, a symposium dedicated to poetry and music, and an evening of Norwegian poetry will be held.

The poetry festival was launched in 1962 to honor Macedonian poets the Miladinov Brothers, born in Struga at the beginning of the 19th century.

Konstantin Miladinov has been considered founder of modern Macedonian poetry and each year the festival officially opens with the recital of his poem "Longing for the South", written during his student days in Moscow.

For the past 47 years, the festival has hosted about 4,000 poets, translators, essayists and literary critics from 95 countries around the world. Enditem

(Xinhua News Agency August 21, 2009)