World Poetry Day

In her message, Ms Azoulay stressed that poetry opens doors for others, enriches dialogue, promotes progress and is needed more than ever in these troubled times. On the importance of poetry for our times, poet Muanis Sinanovic believes that poetry has seemingly no role to play in today's world. "Most people ignore it, but it has a very loyal small audience that cannot do without poetry and knows it. Even civilisation as such cannot endure without poetry, but the majority culture is not aware of this - yet the institutional preservation of poetry is a testimony to its importance," stresses the poet, who believes that only poetry can communicate to man a fundamental truth about language - its miraculousness and its insufficiency at the same time. At the same time, only poetry maintains a real awareness of the wonder of existence and consciousness. That the existence of everything glows in mystery." Azoulay concluded her message by saying that every poetic form is unique, but each reflects the universal nature of the human experience - our quest for creativity that transcends all limitations and boundaries. This is the power of poetry, she stressed.

"In a world marked by words, colours and images born for the real thing, poetry has unprecedented power. It is a power that takes us out of the everyday and a power that reminds us of the beauty that surrounds us, of the resilience of the human spirit," the Director-General of UNESCO said in her message. Love, death and nature have probably always been the most common themes in poetry," she said, especially in the deep connection between emotions and the richness that nature offers, while contemporary authors also touch on ecology and climate change in their poetry.