World Poetry Day is on 21 March, and was declared by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1999. The purpose of the day is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world and, as the UNESCO session declaring the day says, to "give fresh recognition and impetus to national, regional and international poetry movements".
It was generally celebrated in October, sometimes on the 5th, but in the latter part of the 20th Century the world community celebrated it on 15 October, the birthday of Virgil, the Roman epic poet and poet laureate under Augustus. The tradition to keep an October date for national or international poetry day celebrations still holds in many countries. It is still 5 October in the UK. Alternatively, a different October or even November date is celebrated.
Famous quotes containing the words world, poetry and/or day:
“Just kids! That’s about the craziest argument I’ve ever heard. Every criminal in the world was a kid once. What does it prove?”
—Theodore Simonson. Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr.. Jim Bird, The Blob, responding to the suggestion that they not lock up the teens pulling the alien “prank,” (1958)
“There is only beauty—and it has only one perfect expression—Poetry. All the rest is a lie—except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship.... For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.”
—Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898)
“Is money money or isn’t money money. Everybody who earns
it and spends it every day in order to live knows
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gathered in as taxes knows money is not money. That
is what makes everybody go crazy.... When you earn
money and spend money every day anybody can know the
difference between a million and three. But when you
vote money away there really is not any difference
between a million and three.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)