Poet Laureate Babs Gons on tour with 1,000 poets

On Sunday 24 September, Babs Gons will be installed as Poet Laureate in Utrecht. This is also the starting signal for a two-week tour of Gons through the Netherlands and Flanders, together with a thousand other poets. The poetry caravan '1000 Dichters' will travel by tour bus to a different city every day, to return to Utrecht on 7 October. That is when the 40th edition of De Nacht van de Poëzie will take place.

It is probably the longest and biggest poetry marathon in history: 1,000 poets reciting their poems for a fortnight in 13 different cities. Babs Gons: "I very much want to be the Poet Laureate of the whole country and visit as many places as possible in all provinces over the next two years. The 1000 poets tour is a great start to that."

The marathon is organised on the occasion of the 40th edition of The Night of Poetry. That event has been bringing poetry to a sold-out Great Hall of TivoliVredenburg since the early 1980s. On this anniversary, The Night turns its one-off spotlight on anyone willing to read a poem.

In recent months, more than a thousand poets from across the country have signed up. The youngest participant is 10, the oldest 86 and there will be readings in 20 different languages and dialects, in addition to Dutch in Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Italian, Heëlesj, Venloos, Walcheren and Westerkwartiers, among others.

Each tour day will also feature readings by poets who have appeared at The Night of Poetry in the past, such as Vrouwkje Tuinman, Anne Vegter, Ted van Lieshout, Ingmar Heytze, Lévi Weemoedt, Radna Fabias, Simone Atangana Bekono and night presenters Piet Piryns and Ester Naomi Perquin. Musical and theatrical entr'actes will be provided by, among others, Broeder Dieleman, Meindert Talma, Pete Wu, Esohe Weyden, Kush Band, Robin Scherpen, Gerson Main and Ma'MaQueen. In many cities, extraordinary poets (people with intellectual disabilities and non-congenital brain injuries) and ambassadors through Special Arts are in attendance.

1000 Poets, the Night of Poetry on tour can be seen in Utrecht, Haarlem, Almere, Meppel, Zwolle, Harlingen, Groningen, Eindhoven, Arnhem, Maastricht, Middelburg, Antwerp and Rotterdam.

All performances are free of charge and can also be followed online by livestream via the 1000 Poets page of the International Literature Festival Utrecht (ILFU)
ilfu.com/1000poets

This year's International Literature Festival Utrecht (ILFU) will take place from 23 September to 7 October, with performances by, among others. Mensje van Keulen, Maggie Nelson, Philippe Claudel and Georgi Gospodinov, and major events like the NK Poetry Slam, the Young Adult festival and the 40th Night of Poetry. The festival opens on 24 September with the inauguration of Babs Gons as the new Poet Laureate.