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From Stockholm: Hope is poetry

Hope is poetry/Hopp i dikter” is an initiative of the Italian Cultural Institute in Stockholm, directed by Maria Sica. Five poems, in both Italian and Swedish, will appear for two weeks on posters in more than 2000 advertising spaces on buses and underground trains in the Swedish capital. The authors selected are Antonella Anedda, Valerio Magrelli, Alda Merini, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Dacia Maraini, all of whom are already available in translation in Sweden, with at least one collection of their works published in Swedish. Dacia Maraini composed a poem especially for the occasion, which she has donated to the Institute.

The project follows a well-established international model, in use for more than thirty years in different countries all over the world, following the examples of Poems on the Underground, a project introduced by Transport for London in 1986 to make commuters’ journeys on public transport more interesting by displaying poems on London’s underground trains, and Poetry in Motion, created by the Poetry Society of America together with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York to bring poetry to New York’s buses and subways.

Poetry is hope/Hopp i dikter is the first of a series of initiatives being developed by the Italian Cultural Institute in Stockholm for Italian poetry in 2021, which also include the publication of two anthologies of the works of modern Italian female poets and collaboration projects with Italian poetry festivals and the Gothenburg Book Fair.

 

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