Poetry Expo 25
/ 15 February 2025
Poetry Week in Flanders and the Netherlands: A European Inspiration
Poetry Expo 25
The end of January 2025, the 13th edition of Poetry Week was celebrated across Flanders and the Netherlands, becoming the largest poetry campaign in the Low Countries. This event, an organisation of Poëziecentrum in Belgium in collaboration Poetry International in the Netherlands – 2 Versopolispartners!, highlights the power of poetry to unite and inspire people.
The theme of this year’s Poetry Week is Embodiment, with renowned poet Charlotte Van den Broeck, also a Versopolis poet, as the ambassador. She wrote the Poetry Present, a free book given with a €12.50 purchase in participating bookstores, making poetry accessible to everyone. It’s an excellent model for encouraging more people to discover poetry, even those who might not typically seek it out.
In the 2 videos below you can discover a glimpse.
Below you can find the translation for the words Broeck spoke in the video:
I am Charlotte van den Broeck.
I am a poet, and this year I had the great pleasure of writing the Poetry Gift 2025.
It’s called Plakboel, and it turned into one long, exuberant poem.
A poetic erotica, or an erotic poetics, if you like.
In which all sorts of bodies, human and non-human bodies, animals, plants, organisms, single-celled beings, and linguistic bodies are celebrated.
This year's Poetry Week theme is, after all, corporeality, and I am firmly convinced that poetry, with all its visual, musical, and rhythmic capabilities, is a matter of the body. A celebration for the senses, a matter for everything we hold within our bodies.
For emotions, memories, processes, desires.
And that’s why I would like to invite everyone, during Poetry Week, to let themselves be stimulated by poems.
And that can happen in all sorts of ways. Have a loved one read to you, take a bath with a poetry collection, go listen to a reading, come together, because a lot of fun events are organized.
And if you’re at the bookstore and you buy the work of a poet, you’ll get my Plakboel for free.
Poetry Week is celebrated widely, with events in schools, libraries, and bookstores. Inclusivity plays an important role in these celebrations. The Poetry Present is also presented in Braille and as an audiobook, ensuring accessibility for blind and visually impaired readers. An accessible guide for Dutch as a second language (NT2) learners has also been created.
In addition to the wide range of events, museums, businesses, and even members of the Flemish Parliament engage with the event. The hashtag #poezieweek2025 encourages participation from across society.
Poetry Week serves as an inspiring model for Europe, showing how poetry can unite diverse communities and promote inclusivity. Through accessible initiatives, the event demonstrates that poetry is for all, transcending barriers of language, ability, and socio-economic status.
Find out more at www.poezieweek.com
The project is part of the subtheme Re-imaging the future through the power of words.
Author
Poëziecentrum Belgium
Poëziecentrum vzw is thé information and expertise centre for Dutch poetry and international poetry in Dutch translation. To achieve its main objectives, Poëziecentrum provides some services for the various target groups. First of all, it gathers documentation and information on historical and contemporary poetry to enhance its expertise on the field. It organises and supports poetic competitions, events, exposures and workshops Poëziecentrum publishes its own poetry magazine Poëziekrant which contains qualitative interviews, unpublished poems and contemporary topics. Poëziecentrum is also a publisher for both books of poetry, volumes, translations. It has its own shop and reception with poetry books and gadgets. Bringing good poetry to the people and support poets and their poetry are the basic lines. Poëziecentrum is the Belgian partner of Verspolis. In collaboration with Antwerp Book City it invites Verspolis poets to the Felix Poetry Festival.
Author
Charlotte Van den Broeck
studied English and German and is taking a degree course in Arts of the Spoken Word and Theatre at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. In 2015, she made her debut with the poetry collection Kameleon (Chameleon) at the Arbeiderspers. The collection was awarded the Herman de Coninck Debut prize. In January 2017, her second collection Nachtroer (name of a late night shop) made its appearance. She has been published in various literary journals in the Netherlands and Flanders. Some of her poems have been translated into German, English and Arabic. Besides being a poet, she is also a performer and seeks the ability to pronounce and experience poetry onstage.
