Program Saturday 10 June

Between the first feature film in the morning and the Poetry Night Afterparty late at night, experience a jam-packed festival day on Saturday, June 10, with lots of performing poets, interviews and themed specials. We'll talk about poetic science fiction, poetry as protest and first drafts. Highlights include Claudia Rankine's performance and presentation of the Dutch translation of her collection Citizen: An American Lyric and singer-songwriter Naaz's acoustic set. And we make unmissable specials with Rotterdam's Spraakuhloos and Utrecht's Mooie Woorden, an open stage i.c.w. Unwanted Words and much more. There are food trucks with delicious food, there is music, there are books and there is an open stage, it's a world in itself. Enjoy!

Program outline

Poets 
Today you will see and hear poetry in many languages and forms at the festival. From the confrontational collage-like poems of Claudia Rankine to the entertaining poems for poetry haters by Ingmar Heytze. Look out for readings from Rachel Long, Paul Tran, Simone Atangana Bekono, Ruth Lasters, Ribka Sibhatu, Farhad Showghi, Radoslaw Jurczak, Laura Vazquez and Signe Gjessing, among others.  

Talks 
Shantie Singh interviews Ada Limón in a special edition of Guiding Voices, a series of international author portraits. In Sci-fi poetry: writing other realms we take off into space in search of futuristic worlds in poetry, in Load poems like guns Somaia Ramish (Afghanistan) and writer Ishmail Kamara deploy poetry as a form of protest. Refugee Ukrainian poets in the Netherlands share their views on the role of wartime poetry with short films in Ukrainian poetry: writing in wartime. Poetry International and spoken word stage Spraakuhloos will show you how national borders disappear when poetry plays the leading role with an encounter between international and Rotterdam-based word artists - including American Porsha Olayiwola. Together with Utrecht-based Mooie Woorden, Poetry presents Only Poems Can Save Us Now, where you (the visitor) and a handful of superheroes (the poets) have no more than an hour to solve all the current shitshows of this world.  

There is a feature film for that! 
Every day the festival presents impressive poetic films. Today they are Cemetery of splendour by director Apichatpong Weerasethakul and My own private Idaho, featuring a squeaky young Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix in his latest film role. The films are accessible with your ticket to the festival or with a separate ticket purchased from LantarenVenster.

In the foyer 
Great books, wannahaves and good food in and around the foyer again today, as well as an unmissable performance by Kurdish-Dutch singer-songwriter Naaz. Translators battle each other with creative translation finds during the Translators' Slam, Unwanted Words - platform for up & coming LGBTQ+ poets and spoken word artists - hosts the Open Podium (sign up here) and in First drafts poets candidly share the eventful route from first draft to .FIN manuscript. The Poetry Night Afterparty will have you dancing loosely back into the night.  

Workshops
During the festival you can participate in the writing workshops in collaboration with The Writer's Guide (To The Galaxy) and of course the annual translation workshops with festival translators and poets. You will need a separate ticket to participate; the workshops will appear online soon. 

More detailed program info will follow soon. Buy your tickets before May 1 for 25% Earlybird discount.