Dubai: Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi, UAE Minister of Culture and Youth, launched The World Poetry Tree, a global poetry anthology for hope, love, and peace, at Expo 2020 Dubai on Thursday.
The launch took place at the UAE Pavilion in the presence of celebrated Emirati poet Adel Khozam and his family who are the brain behind this poetry collection, and worked on the coordination, editing and design of the book.
The collection includes poems by 405 leading poets from 106 countries from around the world, including Nobel Prize nominees for literature, directors of global poetry festivals, supervisors of world renowned culture magazines and platforms and professors of literature from various universities who are part of this 1,000-page international literary work. This book will go down in the history of World Expos as a first-of-its-kind initiative to compile the works of literary luminaries from all continents into an anthology.
Embracing creativity
Noura Al Kaabi said that the Ministry of Culture and Youth encourages and supports such projects. She appreciated the Emirati family’s initiative to come up with the concept of this collection and thanked all the participating poets for their contributions. By hosting 192 different countries at Expo 2020 Dubai, the UAE has embraced creative voices from different cultures and backgrounds. The poetry anthology that embodies the message of love and peace is yet another accomplishment for the Expo to build bridges between cultures.
The tree motif
The book was supervised by Adel Khozam, one of the UAE’s most prominent poets, who has published 15 books comprising poetry collections, novels and philosophy. In 2020, Khozam won the Tulula Poetry Award in Italy and was awarded the Silver Shield by the World Federation of Hispanic Writers for his outstanding work that supports education, culture, art, poetry, literature, peace, and social justice.
The World Poetry Tree was co-edited and coordinated by his family members, Dr Heyam Abdulhamid, Hamdan Alkhezam, Muna Alkhezam, and Manal Alkhezam. Manal is the artist behind the design of the anthology, a tree that consists of 12 branches. Each branch contains about 35 poets whose poems are distributed on different branches and each branch carries a subtitle with an innovative theme.
Khozam said the initiative serves Expo 2020 Dubai’s theme of ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’, where poetry is at the heart of human thought and calls for the convergence of countries and cultures to promote love, hope and peace. This anthology is just the beginning as the poet has already started working on a second edition of the anthology to be launched at Expo 2025 Osaka in Japan.
Leading participants
Some of the world’s leading poets participating in this anthology include:
Germain Droogenbroodt from Belgium, Nobel Prize nominee in 2017. Fernando Rendon from Colombia, coordinator of the World Poetry Movement, and founder and director of the Medellin International Poetry Festival.
Michael Rothenberg from the United States, founder of 100 Thousand Poets for Change. Claudia Piccinno from Italy, the continental director for Europe in the World Poetry Festival. Rati Saxena from India, one of the most prominent names in the Kritya Literary Organisation. Vadim Terekhin from Russia, chairman of the Kaluga regional branch of the all-Russian public organisation ‘Union of writers of Russia’. Jenny Lewis from the United Kingdom, who teaches poetry at Oxford University.
In addition, about 65 Arab poets, as well as participants from all across Asia, Europe, Australia and North and South America also feature in the anthology.
The E-book will be distributed to all participating poets, as well as accessible through online book platforms across the globe.
