The International Poetry Summit: Making Resolutions

As part of the festival theme The Poetry Summit: Laureates & Legends, this unique program brings together renowned international poets to discuss their visions for the future of poetry. In an engaging conversation, the poets will explore what is most crucial for the art form's future and their role in shaping it. 

The various discussions of the Poetry Summit will culminate in the creation of the Declaration for Future Generations, which will be written by Babs Gons, the Poet Laureate of the Netherlands, and presented at the end of the festival. This declaration aims to ensure the preservation and evolution of poetry for the generations to come. The poets will reflect on what is needed to safeguard poetry's relevance and power in the changing world, and how they see their contributions in this ongoing journey.

On stage we welcome poets Alysia Nicole Harris, Esther Phillips and Simon Armitage for their insights. Dieuwertje Mertens will moderate the talk.

Join us as these literary legends share their insights, helping to chart a course for the future of poetry!

Alysia Nicole Harris

Alysia Nicole Harris is a poet, journalist, linguist, and teaching-artist. 

Harris holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and a PhD in Linguistics from Yale University. She has been working as a performance artist and speaker since 2010, and is currently serving as the founding Arts and Soul Editor of Scalawag Magazine, which focuses on the politics and culture of the southern United States. 

In 2016, Harris published the chapbook How Much We Must Have Looked Like Stars to Stars, winning the New Women’s Voices Award. Her poetry has been described as lush in texture, full of life, and indeed alive in a profound and humane way. Her work has been featured in numerous publications such as Vinyl Poetry, the Letters Journal, and Solstice Literary Magazine. Her written poetry was included in the anthology The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (2015), and Harris has performed her spoken word on stages worldwide. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice (in 2014 and 2017) and was awarded a Cave Canem Fellowship in 2015. Harris’s work is collaborative and connected to place and community; this is illustrated by the part she played in the founding of the Artist Inn Detroit and The Strivers Row collective. 

Esther Phillips

Esther Phillips is a Barbadian poet, teacher, and editor. In 2018, she was appointed the first Poet Laureate of Barbados. She began writing at an early age, publishing her first poems in the literary magazine BIM. She later earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Miami, receiving the Alfred Boas Poetry Prize. 

Phillips has published four poetry collections and a chapbook, including Witness in Stone (2021) and Leaving Atlantis (2015). Her poetry, shaped by her Christian faith and rural upbringing, explores themes of love, grief, and memory. Using layered yet accessible language, she captures both personal emotions and historical experiences, particularly those tied to Caribbean culture and colonialism. 

She founded the Bim Literary Festival and is a leading voice in Barbados' reparations movement. In 2023, she was awarded the Order of the Republic of Barbados (OR).

Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage is the current poet laureate of the United Kingdom (2019-2029). He is an author, translator, musician, playwright and Professor of Poetry at Leeds University.

After studying geography and social work, Armitage published his first poetry collection in 1989 and continued working as a probation officer.

Some of Armitage's collections include Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems (2020), a collection of poems that are concerned with places in his hometown in West Yorkshire, and Blossomise (2023). He has translated classical verses, such as the medieval poems Pearl, for which he was awarded the PEN America Award for Poetry in Translation. His adaptations of Homer’s Odyssey and the Iliad were performed in London.  

He has received numerous prizes, including the Ivor Novello Award and a BAFTA for Feltham Sings in 2003, and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2018.