April is National Poetry Month established by the Academy of American Poets in 1996 to remind the public that poets and poetry play an integral role in our national culture, and in others as well, and they have an important place in our lives, both in the USA and beyond, to give fresh recognition and impetus to regional, national, and international poetry movements.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted March 21 as World Poetry Day during its 30th General Conference in Paris in 1999. It was established to celebrate this unique cultural and linguistic expression. “Every form of poetry is unique, but each reflects the universal nature of the human experience,” writes UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay; “Our aspirations of creativity that crosses boundaries and borders.” This is the power of poetry! This dialogue “enriches that catalyzes all human progress and is more necessary than ever in turbulent times. She concludes: “Oral traditions and expressions are used to pass on knowledge, cultural and social values and collective memory. They play a crucial part in keeping cultures alive . . . [and] allowed people to escape temporarily from their fears and to find comfort at home with their loved ones.”
We continue to celebrate World Poetry Day "with the aim of supporting linguistic diversity through poetic expression and increasing the opportunity for endangered languages to be heard." This year UNESCO marks the advent of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, to affirm its commitment to indigenous peoples worldwide.
This year World Poetry Day takes on a special significance and poets around the world have gathered to express their solidarity with the brave and heroic Ukrainian people as they defend their country from the savage and criminal war Russian president Vladimir Putin has unleashed on them for no other reason than to create a fascist state as the true and legal successor state of the brutal Russian empire and the former Soviet Union.
In celebration of World Poetry Day and standing in solidarity with sister Cities of Literature in Lviv and Odessa in Ukraine, several of UNESCO’s 42 Cities of Literature have joined together to present the poem, “So I’ll talk about it” by Serhiy Zhadan and translated by John Hennessy and Ostap Kin. He is one of Ukraine’s best-known poets and novelists, who gathers crowds of thousands of people at his book launches and events. https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/12137/contemporary-ukrainian-poems
Men that dance the way they quench
steppe-fire with their boots.
Women that hold onto their men in dance
like they don’t want to let them go to war.
As I celebrated my 71st birthday on Match 21 I joined poets and writers from around the world in support of the Ukrainian people in their brave stand against Putin's criminal war. Who can forget the words of Yevgeni Yevtushenko’s poem “Babyn Yar”?
O, Russia of my heart, I know that you
Are international, by inner nature.
But often those whose hands are steeped in filth
Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.
We recall these words as Russian missiles land close to the memorial to that past massacre just outside Kyiv, the besieged Ukrainian capital.
Let these words and others ring again in our ears as we watch with heavy hearts the death and destruction visited on the brave Ukrainian people who only want to live in peace.
Слава Україні ! Героям слава !
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