The whole world is celebrating the possibilities of bridging cultures that poetry brings, as audiences discover in poetry an antidote to lives constricted by the end of a civilization. This kind of cultural integration Canada has undertaken in its social life for two decades, so that now Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal are among the most ethnically-diverse cities on the planet. To share in the excitement, to get yourself overseas, or to be inspired, check out these links. Some of them are among the largest and most prestigious festivals in the world. Others operate every two or three years and update their websites about as frequently. I think I've made it clear below which are which. Both might be worth checking out, of course.

World Poetry Day
Not exactly a festival in one place -- think of it as a world festival with many events happening simultaneously in different countries. World Poetry Day, March 21, is a special day established by UNESCO to celebrate poetry around the world. UNESCO's own web page about this is here. In Canada, the Canadian Heritage Department has special events and activties for World Poetry Day connected to this page.

United States
Austin International Poetry Festival The 11th annual Austin International Poetry Festival wil be held from April 11-13, 2003, with music and visual art, too. It is billed as one of the largest OPEN poetry festivals anywhere.

Netherlands
Poetry International Rotterdam This beautiful and extensive site also hosts an archive of all festivals since 1970, with manuscripts, letters, photographs, film, audio, and translations. They don't have a lot of this material up yet, but the site is searchable, and the organizers promise to expand the archives continually.

34th Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam June 14-20, 2003 Rotterdam City Theatre, the Netherlands.
From June 14 until June 20 the 34th edition of the Poetry International Festival will take place. Some 35 poets from all over the world, including Inger Christensen (Denmark), Abbas Beydoun (Lebanon), Sergej Gandlevski (Russia), C.O. Jellema (the Netherlands), Miquel de Palol (Spain), Matthew Sweeney (Ireland) and Yorgis Pavlopolos (Greece), will be present. The central focus of this year's festival is Mediterranean poetry; poets coming from nearly all of the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea will be present. During the festival, there will be a discussion about Mediterranean culture as the greatest common denominator of a divided area. For more information, contact: Ms. Eefke Voeten: pr@poetry.nl.

Australia
Tasmanian Poetry FestivalThis celebration of 9 poets reading in 4 venues, which recently hosted one of Canada's greatest poets, Dave McFadden (whom they loved), also hosts the Hobart Writer's Residency and the Launceston Poetry Cup This original one-minute performance poetry contest is imitated all over Australia. The winner is the poet who, within the strictly enforced time limit of one minute, elicits the loudest audience response for the reading or recitation of an original poem.

United States
The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival Every September, the historical village of Waterloo, New Jersey hosts the largest poetry festival in North America, among the grist mill, the ice house, and the old apothecary. There are four days of readings, discussions, conversations and workshops taking place throughout the village and in the main tent, which seats 2000. There are usually a dozen simultaneous events going on.

France
Festival Franco-Anglais de Poésie The Anglo-French Poetry Festival is mainly a poetry translation festival, adding the participation of artists from different disciplines. It was created in 1976, and is entering its 25th year. There are translation workshops, in which the poet works with the translators, bilingual public readings, exhibitions of visual artworks on poems of the guest poets. That's not all. There's music, too.

Canada
The Festival International de la Poésie de Trois-Rivières held its 18th festival in 2002. It showcases and celebrates poets from Quebec, French-speaking poets from the rest of Canada, and a wide selection of other poets from France and the world (and not just the French-speaking world, either). It looks like a national treasure.

Colombia
To bring some fun and culture to a strife-ravaged city, Medellin hosts this big annual international summer poetry festival, often bringing in 70 or more more poets from 40-plus nations -- including Canada.

Ireland
The Hopkins Poetry Festival is definitely not just about Hopkins, but they do love him so. There are readings, translation workshops, and a lot more in this annual celebration of poetry and verse.

Toronto
Harbourfront International Festival of Authors. It's each summer. It's big. I hear it's wonderful. This is a calendar of events for the centre on Lake Ontario. Look for updates.

Italy
Festival Internazionale di Poesia di Genova The 8th Genoa Poetry Festival was held in August, 2002, with over 60 artists from all over the world. It comes with its own art gallery of electronic art, no, not glitzy stuff made with Photoshop filters, but real photographic art of a very deconstructed world. Check it out. The organizers pride themselves on being a mainstay of the European cultural summer, and having found the perfect balance between high art and entertainment.

United States. People's Poetry Gathering A Woodstock for words in lower Manhattan. Next year: April 11-13, 2003. In the tradition of Brazilian string poetry (tantalizing, eh?). The website gives clips, discussion, and a board to post (and read) found poetry.

Ireland
The Strokestown Poetry Festival. The festival takes place this year in May. They also offer a contest with some big prizes and small entry fees. Judging by the website, I'd say that the contest was the centre of the whole affair.

Columbia
Festival Internacional de Poesía en Medellín The International Poetry Festival in Medellín was founded in 1991, amid a climate of violence and death, as an expression of poetry's capacity for mobilization and the rebuilding of a social fabric lacerated by explosive disintegration. One festival included seventy poets from 43 nations, and had an audience of 200,000. If you think that's an exaggeration, check out the photos on the web site! They also run an impressive poetry school, which should be the dream of all poets around the world. Read their introduction. You'll see what I mean.

England
Ledbury Poetry Festival This festival in the medieval town of Ledbury has a website for the Festival. You might like to contact them to see how it went and what's in the works for next year.

France
Marché de la Poésie Place Saint Sulpice is transformed annually into a poetic village in the centre of Paris to host this celebration of poetry which began with the anthology Enquête Poésie, back in 1983. This festival is of a high literary calibre.

Canada
Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival Contact: Linda Leith. Aside from regular readings, this hard-working organization hosts the $10,000 Blue Metropolis International Literary Prize, spotlights young talented writers from around the world, bilingual readings, a translation slam, languages other than our two official ones (in 2000 it was Spanish), a student literacy program, a community writing program, and your first and only opportunity to plunge into the world of underwater literature.

England
Here are 100 festivals from the U.K.

United States
National Poetry Video Festival Slam poetry, video poetry, most of the time both at once. Say no more. Look. See.

United States
The Skagit River Poetry Festival This is a biennial festival. The latest one was in May, 2002, in the historic town of La Conner, Washington. It's within striking distance of Seattle and Bellingham. The festival has a strong liaison with the seven rural school districts in the County, with residencies, performances, and outreach programs.

United States
Dancing Poetry Festival Imagine: dancing, from around the world, mixed with poetry and elegance, dancing to poetry, in four hours, once a year, in San Francisco, for the eighth year in a row, olé.

United States.
Tucson Poetry Festival. The festival takes place in Arizona in April and the most recent theme was Conservation.

Sweden
The Poetry Olympics. This is a very informative site about Slam Poetry. It is also the home page for the 1997 Poetry Olympics in Stockholm. Let's hope they'll do it again. Until then, be inspired to slam.

England
Poetry International of London Set up in the South Bank Centre with only the skateboarders between it and the Thames, this festival features over 50 diverse poets from all over the world. This is a high-class festival with some heavy-weights like John Ashberry (USA, Yehuda Amichai (Israel) Yves Bonnefoy (France) and Les Murray (Australia), Tua Forsström (Finland), Dimitri Prigov (Russia) and Volker Braun (Germany).There are links with film and drama, both a Writer in Residence and a Reader in Residence. There are workshops, surgeries (now, that's interesting) and master classes, a poetry breakfast where festival poets will be revealing the work that inspires them, and shows for younger readers and their families. Pretty well everything, by the looks of it. Bring your skateboard, maybe. Sometimes the page loads. Sometimes it does not. Sigh.

Australia
Queensland Poetry Festival They held their last one in 2002. A poetry festival down under.

Scotland
StAnza Some of best poetry of our time comes to a mixture of university, independent and commercial venues across the ancient burgh of St Andrews, including numerous poets of various ages, cultures, ethnicities and styles that make up poetry today: the likes of Seamus Heaney and Paul Durcan alongside performance poets; translation and visual poetry, conversations with biographers and enthusiasts, and open mic sessions, and more. All this and music, art and drama too!

United States
The Los Angeles Poetry Festival. This looks like a big one. You gotta admire any big city festival which has a special link to honour Walla Walla, Washington, otherwise famous for big sweet onions.

South Africa.
Poetry Africa Festival. The University of Natal hosted this huge event in 2000. Canadian poet Pat Lane attended. There's a fine shot of him with Breytenbach. This page is actually a page for all of the University of Natal's festivals, but if you scroll down you'll quickly get to the poetry. There's a scrapbook of pictures, too.

Sweden
The International Poetry Festival on Götland This festival from Sweden takes pride in celebrating the countries and cultures and poetries of the Baltic.

Sweden
Stockholm Poetry Festival Stockholm's literary journal, 00TAL (formerly 90TAL and 80TAL, but times change), hosts Scandinavia's largest poetry festival, combining poetry with performance, dance and music. A recent festival focussed on the theme of resistance, with poets from Jamaica (via the U.K.), Denmark, Norway, Finland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Sweden. Another site that loads sometimes and sometimes sleeps.

England
World Haiku Festival 2000 This forum is a five-year-long haiku project, culminating in the successful London-Oxford Conference 25-30 August 2000. "Epilogue to WHF2000", May 2001 in London, marked the finale of this complex world haiku event.

Ireland
Cúirt International Festival of Literature. The Galway Arts Centre presents the Cúirt International Festival of Literature. Writers have come from The United States, Britain, the Middle East, and South America, among some of Ireland's most outstanding established and new voices.

United Kingdom
Literary festivals in the UK The British Council maintains a big list of literary festivals in the UK.Here's the home page for their literature department and all its activities, including a list of foreign readings by UK authors.

United States
E-Poetry 2001: An International Digital Poetry Festival
was the first convocation of digital poets and artists to focus on the state of art of digital poetry. The conference brought together practitioners who have never before appeared together in the same program. Participants came from countries such as Brazil, the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Russia, Japan, and Australia, in addition to Canada and the U.S. The festival focused on works in networked and programmable media, kinetic/visual works, hypertext, and multiple practices in digital media. Featured poets read, performed, and exhibited works that defined the state of the art in digital poetries. No obvious word on when the next one is planned, but with the growth in digital art, it can't be long?

Ireland
Sirius Arts Centre, in Cobh (pronounced "Cove"), Country Cork, Ireland, is not a festival, but it very festively invites any Canadian poets travelling to Ireland to contact them at cobharts@iol.ie. If you're thinking of getting on the festival circuit, this looks like a great contact.

England
The Aldeburgh Poetry Festival The Aldeburgh Poetry Festival is Britain's best-attended annual international poetry festival, attracting the largest, most loyal audiences (200+ per reading) and enjoying the highest reputation among poets, and free, as they say, from hype and spin.

Scotland
The Edinburgh Literary Festival Ok, it's not really a poetry festival, but it's big. Did I say big? I meant BIG. This is one of the world's premier literary festivals. Poets welcome.

Is that all, you ask? Well, if you search, you'll get in the order of a quarter million hits! No wonder some of those pages don't get updated regularly. I found links to other festivals, too, but they came out dead or didn't come out at all. Please let me know if you have a festival not listed here or if you have anything to add.

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