1,000 poets sought for nationwide poetry marathon

Twenty poets perform at The Night of Poetry every year, while the Dutch-speaking world has several hundred published and professionally reciting poets, several thousand aspiring poets and many more practitioners who write poetry in their spare time. Surveys in the past even came to 600,000 to 800,000 people writing poetry on a regular basis. On the occasion of the 40th Night, we are giving a thousand of them the opportunity to perform at this one-off Night of Poetry on tour.

Tour of the Netherlands and Flanders
The 1000 Poets Marathon starts and ends in Utrecht but in between, the caravan passes bookstores throughout the Netherlands and Flanders. From De Groene Waterman in Antwerp to Van der Velde in Harlingen and from Boekhandel Dominicanen in Maastricht to Stumpel in Almere; everywhere dozens of people will read their own poems or those of another to move and amuse us with the power and beauty of the most beautiful literary genre at our disposal: poetry. Besides the registered poets, there will also be performances by well-known poets, readers and musicians. Participants can sign up for a place and time of their choice to read either a poem of their own or a favourite poem of another poet, in a language of their choice. Participation and admission are free. See the full tour below.

Babs Gons Poet Laureate
Retrieved from September 24 Babs Gons will give the starting signal for the marathon in Utrecht. Later that afternoon, she will be installed in TivoliVredenburg as the new Poet Laureate of the Netherlands, taking over from Lieke Marsman. Babs Gons will also join the tour: she will perform at as many bookstores as possible and will sign her collections.

Online anthology
All performances can be followed online by livestream and watched back on the page ilfu.com/1000poets. It forms an online poetry anthology of a thousand recited poems that together show the versatility of Dutch poetry, in all the languages and dialects spoken in our country.

1000 Poets: an idea by F. Starik and Vrouwkje Tuinman
The idea for 1000 Poets came from poets F. Starik and Vrouwkje Tuinman. They wanted to organise such a poetry festival in Amsterdam back in 2003. "A night of poetry in extremis," Starik said at the time. "With a thousand poets in a non-hierarchical line-up, in the certainty that the lauded, the up-and-coming talent, as well as the old, already almost forgotten poet, the displaced refugee, the young lover, the medal-winning sportsman, the third-year art academy student, as well as sixteen ambitious literature students from Nijmegen, the deaf person who recites poems in sign language, the desperate housewife who lost her only child, the socially successful accountant who nurtures a shaky poetic nature in the evenings, the stuttering saleswoman of the homeless newspaper who writes in the margin, the sufferer from a soul ache, soul ache, because after all, nowadays you also have to write panneNkoek, in the certainty that everyone recites one beautiful verse that evening: namely the most beautiful thing ever written." They peddled the plan at Carré and the Concertgebouw, two years later at Vredenburg and Utrecht's Stadsschouwburg, and again in 2009 at Amsterdam's Leidsepleintheatres; enthusiasm all around, but sponsors declined. Now, twenty years later and five years after Starik's death, the time is ripe and Starik & Tuinman's plan is coming to life after all, touring city and country.

1000 Poets: tour list
Sunday 24 September | Utrecht | The Utrecht Book Market
Monday 25 September | Haarlem | De Vries Van Stockum
Tuesday September 26 | Almere | Stumpel
Wednesday September 27 | Meppel | Riemer Barth
Thursday September 28 | Zwolle | Van der Velde in de Broeren
Friday September 29 | Harlingen | Van der Velde Books Harlingen
Saturday 30 September | Groningen | Riemer
Sunday 1 October | Eindhoven | Van Piere
Monday, October 2 | Arnhem | Hijman Ongerijmd
Tuesday 3 October | Maastricht | Dominicanen (in cooperation with De Tribune)
Wednesday, 4 October | Middelburg | De Drvkkery
Thursday 5 October | Antwerp | De Groene Waterman
Friday 6 October | Rotterdam | Donner
Saturday 7 October | Utrecht | Het Gegeven Paard TivoliVredenburg