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By Anita Singh

 

 

 

 

 

The Southbank Centre in London is staging the biggest gathering of poets in history as part of this summer's Cultural Olympiad.

 

The aim of the Poetry Parnassus is to field a representative from each of the 204 nations competing in the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

 

A worldwide call via poetry festivals and arts organisations has yielded representatives from 181 countries, whittled down from 6,000 nominations.

 

They include Seamus Heaney, Ireland's Nobel laureate, and Jang Jin Seong of North Korea, a former court poet to Kim Jong-il who fled into exile and now lives in South Korea.

 

But, with two months to go, organisers say 23 countries are missing from the line-up

 

Jude Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre, said: “The aim is to celebrate and represent poetry from all of the 204 nations competing at the London 2012 Games, so I’m absolutely determined not to leave anyone out.

 

“We believe that if there are sportspeople in all of these nations, there must be writers too, and we aim to keep searching until we find them all.”

 

The countries yet to be represented: 

American Samoa 

Bhutan 

Brunei Darussalam 

Burkina Faso 

Central African Republic 

Dominica 

Gabon 

Guinea-Bissau 

Lesotho 

Liberia 

Liechtenstein 

Madagascar 

Mali 

Monaco 

Namibia 

Nauru 

Niger 

Palau 

Papua New Guinea 

Seychelles 

St. Vincent & Grenadines 

Timor-Leste 

Vanuatu 

Organisers will cover travel and accommodation costs, and chosen poets who are unable to make the journey will be represented in other ways - their verse will be displayed around the Southbank site.

 

The Poetry Parnassus takes place from June 26 - July 1. 

Poets range in age from 24-year-old Akerke Mussabekova of Kazakhstan to Anise Koltz, 83, from Luxembourg.

 

The tiny nation of Tuvalu in the South Pacific will be represented at the festival by Selina Tusitala Marsh, a poet and academic of Tuvaluan, Samoan, English, Scottish and French descent who is resident in New Zealand.

 

Neighbouring Vanuatu has yet to provide a poet, but a visit to Britain would be the realisation of a dream for some of the islanders.

 

A tribe from Tanna, one of the islands that makes up the South Pacific nation, worship the Duke of Edinburgh as a god.

 

The origins of the belief are uncertain but the islanders’ faith was strengthened when the Queen and Prince Philip paid an official visit in 1974 aboard the royal yacht Britannia.

 

For details of how to nominate a poet from a country listed above, click here 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Parnassus  Telegraph