The Written World brings Olympic spirit to poetry

With the 2012 Summer Olympics coming up in July, hosted this year in London, two of the United Kingdom’s biggest names in contemporary culture and poetry, the BBC and the Scottish Poetry Library, have decided to arrange their own kind of Olympics: The Written World. This will take the form of 204 selected poems, one from each of the Olympic nations, to be read by UK-based individuals with ties to the relevant countries, and broadcast by the BBC. The Guardian writes that “we have a beauty therapist from Denmark and a Nigerian priest already lined up for radio stardom”.


Beginning yesterday with Grace Nichols, who represents Guyana with her poem ‘Like a Beacon’, the broadcasts will continue until the Paralympics closing ceremony on the 9 September. Today’s poem comes from India – ‘Homecoming’, written by Tishani Doshi and read by Lalitha Natarajan.

“Poetry acts as an x-ray of a country”, writes the Scottish Poetry Library on its blog. “It sees deeper than a news report can. [. . .] Although there are regional differences – beautifully captured in the verse chosen – it is heartening to encounter the ways in which a variety of human endeavours and emotions recur, whether the poet hails from Mogadishu or Montreal.”


A number of the poems selected for the project have been previously published on Poetry International Web. “Your site has been a great resource for us,” said Sarah Stewart of the Scottish Poetry Library.


poetryinternational.org