17 Jul 2026
Three evenings of workshops and performances brought poetry into the public spaces of Benevento, transforming the city into a place of connection, creativity, and participation.
Over three evenings in June and July, Benevento turned into an open page. On a blanket in the grass, someone tears a newspaper into pieces that will become a poem. In a quiet room, poems are signed instead of spoken. By the last evening, a piazza becomes a stage for poems performed as living manifestos.
This was Poetry Week, three free public evenings held in Benevento on June 8, June 13, and July 4, part of Poetry Goes Outside, an Erasmus+ project co-funded by the European Union that brings together Gramigna APS with Dideas (Spain), Solution (France), and Foundation Parasol (Poland). The project has built a collection of poems from across its partner countries, celebrating the richness and diversity of European poetic heritage.
It opened at L'Abbazia, with a performative poetry workshop in Italian Sign Language (LIS), curated by Parolemute, where poems were carried by hands rather than voices. A few days later, Piazza San Modesto turned into a collage table for Strappi Poetici with Vik Palmieri: newspapers and magazines torn apart and rebuilt into new poems, piece by piece. The week closed in Piazza Roma with Poetico è Politico, a guerrilla poetry workshop led by Fran Allen Zimmerman, performed as living manifestos in the square.
"The week was a success because poetry made it to the streets thanks to the collaboration of many artists, activists, and performers with whom we built these events. Benevento is a city filled with poetry; we just need to participate more, and both this project and the week itself truly helped promote that poetic engagement," says Francesca, one of the organizers of Poetry Week.
Three very different evenings, same idea underneath: poetry doesn't need four walls to mean something.
Follow the project: @poetrygoesoutside