Published: March 22, 2011
UN Celebrates World Poetry Day
The United Nations today celebrated the World Poetry Day. The agency highlighted the role of bards in bearing eternal witness to the great transformations of the world and humanity's aesthetic yearnings.
"Poets convey a timeless message. They are often key witness to history's great political and social changes. Their writings inspire us to build lasting peace in our minds, to rethink relations between man and nature and to establish humanism founded on the uniqueness and diversity of peoples."-Director-General Irina Bokova, UNESCO
UNESCO proclaimed 21 March as World Poetry Day in 1999, calling poetry a "a social need, which incites young people in particular to return to their roots, and a means whereby they can look into themselves at a time when the outside world is irresistibly luring them away from themselves."
The main objective of the proclamation is to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard within their communities.
Source: United Nations
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