Open Call for Poetry Expo 2026: “Writing in the Wake of the World – New Verses for Torn Times”

In 2026, poetry once again becomes a map of survival. The Poetry Expo 2026, curated and organised by Versopolis, returns with a vision both urgent and tender: to explore how poetry endures, transforms, and heals in a fractured world.

With the theme „Writing in the Wake of the World – New Verses for Torn Times,“ the Expo invites poets, artists, collectives, and institutions from around the globe to respond to the profound challenges of our era — ecological collapse, wars, displacement, censorship, and the ever-expanding digital noise of misinformation.

In a time when disintegration seems to define the human condition, poetry remains an act of resistance and imagination. It listens where others turn away, speaks from the margins, and dreams of repair.

A Digital Gathering of Poetic Worlds

Entirely online and open to all, Poetry Expo 2026 continues to redefine what a poetry festival can be. This is not a traditional stage or a printed anthology, but a global, digital exhibition — a constellation of voices, languages, and forms that transcend borders.

Participants are encouraged to submit readings, performances, digital poetry, video essays, sound works, visual poetry, or multimedia collaborations. Every format, from analogue experiments to AI-generated poetics, is welcome — so long as it speaks authentically to the world we inhabit.

The Expo will unfold across seven thematic pavilions, each illuminating a different aspect of the poetic response to crisis and transformation:

1. Writing After – Catastrophe, Memory, and the Archive of Loss

Poetry as witness and memorial, writing after war, disaster, or extinction.

2. Symbiotic Futures – Ecopoetics in the Age of Extinction

Listening to the voices of the more-than-human world, from forests to oceans.

3. Disrupted Realities – Poetry and the Politics of Truth

Poetic language as resistance in the age of disinformation and censorship.

4. Hybrid Selves – Gender, Identity, and Posthuman Intimacies

Exploring fluid identities, queer and cyborg poetics, and algorithmic intimacy.

5. Poetic Infrastructures – Reclaiming Space, Building Commons

Poetry as a social architecture — a tool for justice, community, and care.

6. Unruly Forms – Experiments in the Poetic Wild

For those who stretch the limits of poetry — visual, digital, algorithmic, embodied.

7. The Poetics of Care – Intimacy, Tenderness, Repair

Verses as balm and breath — poetry that mends, nurtures, and resists through love.

Building the Archive of Tomorrow

Poetry Expo 2026 is not just an exhibition but a collective document of imagination — a living archive of how language survives disaster and reinvents hope.

Selected works will gain global visibility through Versopolis and partner channels, editorial features, and permanent inclusion in the Expo’s digital archive. A limited number of microgrants will also support translation and collaborative production.

The call for proposals is open until December 15, 2025. Submissions are accepted in all languages, with English subtitles or synopses for accessibility.

In the words of the organizers:

“We write in the wake of the world, not as an ending, but as a beginning. Let this be where verses rise — torn, tangled, glowing.”

For more details or to submit your project, visit Versopolis or contact poetryexpo@versopolis.com

Let the Words Survive. Let the Verses Begin.

As the world trembles between endings and beginnings, Poetry Expo 2026 stands as a luminous reminder that poetry — fragile yet fierce — continues to rebuild what the world forgets.