Story
by
Europeana Foundation
21 March is World Poetry Day. This year, we are inviting you to join a month-long social media salute to poetry from across Europe. From the Romantics to war poetry and from Burns to Punk, discover, share and interact with selected poems in Europeana.
UNESCO World Poetry Day celebrates our shared human experience, the continued relevance of poetry as an art form and the power of the oral tradition.
Join us in this #AllezLiterature poetry season and discover even more poems from regions and cultures all across Europe. Over the coming weeks, you will have the chance to:
- Experience poems in new ways - from YouTube recitals to Punk band covers
- Listen to and share poetry 'playlists' with recordings found on Europeana SoundCloud
- Join the #WW1 Poetry Transcribathon to transcribe, tag and annotate handwritten poems by soldiers and nurses from the First World War
- Share your favourite quotes from and about poems with the hashtag #AllezLiterature
Throughout the month, libraries across Europe will select and share poems in their original languages. In fact, the season kicks off with Soči by one of Slovenia’s best loved poets Simon Gregorčič.
You are invited to experience the poem in two very different ways - by exploring the text online and through a schoolboy’s YouTube recital.
Who was Simon Gregorčič?
Gregorčič was a priest and social campaigner as well as a poet. Soči relates the journey of the River Soca from the mountains to the plains of Trieste. It became a Slovenian rally cry during World War I.