About
Where poetry lives
Versopolis Platform
Versopolis, founded in 2014, is a European poetry platform that creates new and sustainable opportunities for emerging poets. It supports the transnational mobility, visibility, and recognition of authors, offering a nurturing environment for artistic development across borders. The platform has been selected three times under the Creative Europe initiative “Support for European Platforms,” reflecting its relevance, reach, and long-term cultural impact.
Versopolis enables emerging European poets to build international careers, placing their voices in dialogue with diverse audiences, languages, and literary communities. Like a literary agency without borders, it provides substantial organizational, financial, editorial, and promotional support. Poets are invited to leading European festivals, their work is translated into multiple languages, and they are integrated into a wide, supportive network of cultural actors.
Translations are at the heart of the platform’s mission — Versopolis ensures that poets’ works circulate in print, digital, and multimedia formats, including e-books, booklets, online articles, and the Versopolis poetry database. Just as crucial is its strong commitment to mobility, offering poets curated guest appearances at international festivals, where they connect with fellow authors, readers, publishers, translators, and cultural organizers.
To be named a Versopolis poet is a mark of distinction in the European literary community.
As of 2025, Versopolis has become home to 585 poets from 49 countries, writing in 43 languages, with their works presented at 36 member festivals. With this reach, Versopolis stands today as the largest and most ambitious poetry platform in the world.
Versopolis Initiatives
In 2020 and 2021, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Versopolis launched the Festival of Hope — an ambitious digital literary gathering that united over 100 partners from around the globe, from China to North America. The festival served as a beacon of solidarity and creativity during a time of global uncertainty.
Building on this momentum, Versopolis initiated Brave New Literatures in 2022 — a cross-continental experiment and think tank exploring the intersection of poetry, new media, artificial intelligence, and technological innovation in literature.
These pioneering efforts culminated in the creation of Poetry Expo in 2023 — the world’s first fully digital fair dedicated to poetry, human creativity, and literary dialogue. Organized annually every February, Poetry Expo has grown into a recurring global initiative, opening its digital stage to both individuals and institutions across the world. It invites poets, thinkers, publishers, and creative organizations to take part in shaping the future of literature.
By 2025, Poetry Expo has already reached over 400,000 poetry enthusiasts worldwide, establishing itself as a permanent and evolving space for poetic imagination and innovation.
Versopolis website
The Versopolis website serves as both a living archive and a dynamic literary platform, documenting the full breadth of the project’s activities. It features an expansive poetry database, showcasing all selected Versopolis poets, as well as detailed presentations of translators, partner festivals, and editorial collaborations.
But the website is much more than a repository — it is a curated space of critical and creative engagement. Through a constantly growing collection of original content, it offers new writing on urgent cultural, political, and literary themes, contributed by guest editors and authors from across the Versopolis network. An international editorial board selects voices from around the world to address the most pressing questions of our time.
The platform publishes a diverse range of formats: interviews, reportages, columns, essays, and reviews, reflecting the pluralism of contemporary poetic discourse.
To date, Versopolis has published 8 freely available e-books, the Versopolis Manual, and the Versopolis Anthology (Arc Publications, 2020). It has also extended its publishing activities into multilingual print editions, including the Spanish-language anthology published by Círculo de Poesía (2023), and German-language anthology co-published with Verlag Schiler & Mücke (2025).
These publications stand as a testament to the platform’s commitment to translation, international dissemination, and the celebration of poetic voices across languages and borders.
Author of the Week
Author of the Week is a signature feature of the Versopolis platform, curated in collaboration with the Versopolis Review editorial team and partner festivals from across the network. Each edition highlights a thought-provoking essay by an established or emerging writer, offering unique insight into their local literary landscape, poetic practices, and the broader cultural and societal questions that shape their work.
This rotating column captures a multiplicity of voices and perspectives, reflecting the diversity of the European and international poetry scene, while fostering dialogue on the evolving challenges and possibilities of contemporary literature.
Moved by Versopolis
Moved by Versopolis is a visual storytelling initiative that captures the journeys, encounters, and performances of Versopolis poets across Europe and beyond. Harnessing the reach of social media, the programme offers an intimate glimpse into the lived experience of poetic mobility — from festival stages to behind-the-scenes moments — highlighting each poet’s unique voice and creative expression.
Through short videos, mobile vlogs, and real-time festival coverage, Moved by Versopolis celebrates the dynamic movement of poetry through people, places, and languages.
Versopolis Podcast
Launched in 2023, the Versopolis Podcast offers a space for in-depth conversations about contemporary poetry, language, and culture. Hosted by literary scholar Dr Mitja Drab, each episode explores a specific theme, bringing together poets, critics, and cultural thinkers from across Europe and beyond.
With its thoughtful, topic-driven approach, the podcast provides listeners with a unique window into the creative processes, concerns, and innovations shaping today’s most compelling poetic voices.
Versopolis Traineeship Classes
Launched as part of Versopolis’s commitment to education, professional development, and the future of literary culture, the Versopolis Traineeship Classes provide hands-on learning experiences for emerging literary professionals, festival organizers, translators, and editors.
Through a series of interactive sessions, led by experienced mentors and guest experts, the programme equips participants with practical knowledge and critical insights into the world of international poetry curation. Topics include poetry translation, festival production, editorial strategy, audience development, and digital innovation in the literary field.
Traineeship Classes are designed to foster transnational exchange, skills-building, and the formation of new cultural networks, ensuring that the next generation of literary curators and cultural workers are empowered to shape a more inclusive, connected, and forward-looking poetry ecosystem.
Versopolis Global Residency
The Versopolis Global Residency, launching in the 2025–2029 platform cycle, builds on the foundations laid by the successful Versopolis Global Fellowship (2022–2025). Conceived as an ambitious initiative for transnational literary exchange, it offers poets and literary professionals the opportunity to engage in international residencies, festival collaborations, and creative co-productions.
Initiated through the Global Fellowship programme, the Residency aims to expand the poetic dialogue beyond Europe, fostering sustained collaboration between artists, festivals, and institutions across continents. It supports not only the mobility of authors, but also the deepening of artistic practice, intercultural understanding, and long-term project development.
The Versopolis Global Residency stands as a vital space for creative immersion, cultural diplomacy, and the co-creation of new literary connections in a time when global solidarity and imagination are more necessary than ever.
Looking Ahead
As a platform dedicated to poetry and emerging voices, Versopolis envisions a future where literature is not only preserved, but actively lived — woven into the cultural fabric of Europe and beyond. It sees poetry as a vital force: one that transcends linguistic and national boundaries, fosters empathy, and creates shared spaces for reflection, resistance, and renewal.
In the years to come, Versopolis will continue to champion the circulation of poetry, invest in new literary generations, and amplify underrepresented voices. Through innovation in publishing, education, and digital storytelling, the platform will strengthen its role as a laboratory for poetic imagination and cultural transformation.
With its expanding global network, commitment to translation, and belief in the power of poetry to connect communities, Versopolis will remain at the forefront of literary collaboration, experimentation, and exchange — shaping the contours of a more inclusive and creatively vibrant literary landscape.
