World Poetry Day and an Open Call from Belgium

To celebrate World Poetry Day on March 21, Lyrikline publishes six fine new poets from around the world between March 19-21 (find all their names below).

Laurence Vielle

One of them is Wallonian poet Laurence Vielle, the first poet contributed by our new Wallonian network partner L’Arbre de Diane.

Laurence was the Belgian National Poet until Els Moors took over in January of 2018. Now Els Moors has started an open call in connection with World Poetry Day:

Adopt your city with a poem

On the 21st of March, World Poetry Day, the National Poet of Belgium, Els Moors, invites all people worldwide to gather their most beautiful odes and elegies on their cities (/ countries / states / …) and make them public. In times of gentrification, mass tourism and worldwide migration we are craving for lonely flâneurs and notorious wanderers who want to lay bare the mysterious heart of their cities. Are you still in love with the city you were born in? Were you pushed on by love, or obliged to leave your hearth and home? Adopt your city by writing an urban elegy and take part in the writing of the most exotic Lonely Planet at this time: The adopted cities.

Would you like to contribute to this special worldwide anthology, and motivate others to join?
Then join this action in a few steps:
1. Publish your own poem on our page starting the 21st of March 2018: www.adoptedcities.be
2. Post your poem on all your possible (social) media and encourage fellow citizens to adopt a city with a poem and to join the action. Everybody can share their city-poem on our website. On Facebook, please use #adoptedcities so we can follow and share your posts.
3. Enjoy an easily accessible and interactive online anthology, a playful way to motivate people to read and write poetry! 

Els Moors

Read the poems of Els Moors, “Dichter des Vaderlands” of Belgium here. Read the city poem of her predecessor and ambassador Laurence Vielle here.
We would – very much – like people from all over the world to take just a minute to think about poetry (and all its modern interpretations) and to write even a short piece of poetry. Let’s make a tribute to poetry and to our world together!

We hope that many people out there follow Els Moors’ call to post poems. We’d also like to invite you to discover the other new voices that we published on the occasion of this year’s World Poetry Day, next to Laurence Vielle:
M. NourbeSe Philip (Tobago/Canada)
Sukrita Paul Kumar (India)
Benjamín Chávez (Bolivia)
Ketty Nivyabandi (Burundi/Canada) and
Yoko Tawada (Japan/Germany).

Happy World Poetry Day!