As we celebrated the 20th anniversary of UNESCO’s World Poetry Day last 21st March, the Czech Embassy Manila championed poetry as a much-needed force for good in international affairs. In light of the recent terrorist attacks, general rise of movements tied to xenophobia,
anti-semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment, the mission encourages Filipino poetry lovers and writers to engage in the Czech social media platform – POETIZER which can usher in this new role for poetry.
Poetry is often seen as a study of dead white men’s elitist thoughts on nearby flowers and pretty women, yet in line with this significant anniversary, people are encouraged to take a fresh look at poetry and its potential to become a powerful force in international affairs. It’s heightened popularity and relevance is growing each year across the world as it has become an innovative and eloquent form of self-expression.
Over the past few years, poetry has become a potent force for those speaking against globally-felt social injustices and prejudices. Interestingly, most of these new generation of poets and poetry-lovers are from the Generation Z or Millennial. One of whom is the famous representative of the trend, Rupi Kaur, a young Canadian-Indian feminist poet who has sold millions of her poetry books globally.
Lately, poetry has increasingly becoming popular in the Western hemisphere which even grew to such an extent that in 2018, analyses have considered it as a new form of religion which believes in honesty and equality for everyone. Further, with the absence of prejudice as its core value, Poetry has become the preferred choice for people searching for meaningful self-expression.
Poetry has much to offer in today’s increasingly divided world. It has the power to bridge gaps between people globally because it builds real connections based on our common human experiences, irrespective of nationality, social status, religion or political views.
In a world where social media is often characterized as promoting only the edited highlights of a person’s life, traditional social media platforms may not be the best place to share the innermost thoughts, worries or memories. Hence, Lukas and Johana Sedlacek, a couple residing in Prague, designed Poetizer: a social network for poets just for writing, reading and sharing poetry. The site, originally launched in 2017, has since gone global and one can currently find 120,000 poems written by users from 120 countries on it.
Poetizer encourages people to interact with each other irrespective of their nationality, social status, religion or political views and to build meaningful friendships based on their common human experience of the world. The vision of this social media platform, which was founded in the Czech Republic, is for people to better empathize with one another by tearing down those walls we so often have up and that are so often reinforced by harmful ideologies and lack of exposure to otherness.
Now, imagine how different humanity could be if we start communicating through poems and embracing all that we have in common.
For further information on Poetizer, please contact: press@poetizer.com
