Manifest

The Movement for the Emancipation of Poetry is a non-partisan movement of political and social action which has been set up as an alternative way to create and spread contemporary poetry. Expression of a collective need, the MeP has grown out of the contradictions experienced in the current society, consumerist and careless, and it works on solving them in different ways.
The Movement is structured as an ongoing speech based on the constant and active contribution of a heterogeneous multitude of militants. The MeP doesn’t criticize, select or censor – it rather wants to create a space of meeting and dialogue with poetry. What we are interested in, more than the outcome of this dialogue, is making it possible: this is the reason why we have chosen the streets as the first spots of publication.
We will keep examining ourselves and the reality surrounding us until the conditions which have led to the birth of the MeP will be radically changed. At that point, a Movement for the Emancipation of Poetry will cease to exist.

The Movement for the Emancipation of Poetry
Milan, 2018

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To date, poetry does not have, in the vulgar contemporary society, the role that it should, for cultural and historical reasons, belong to. And not because it is not yet the bearer of the ability to communicate and arouse emotions, feelings and fantasies, but because, although we continue to write it, we do not continue to read it, preferring low and empty entertainment to more noble and strenuous exercises of mind and of thought. The MeP does not intend to redefine the concept or limit the poem to a specific “ism”. It does not want to be tied to a stylistic or thematic homogeneity, since it was born as a movement of emancipation of poetry understood in its various forms. The MeP intends to give back to poetry the hegemonic role that belongs to it over the other arts and at the same time not to leave it the exclusive prerogative of a small elite, but to bring it back to the people, on the streets and in the squares. The acts with which we intend to do this are many, and we do not disdain the arrogance of some of them, since contrary to a slow and peaceful work of sensitization, actions of strong impact are able to have their effect immediately. We try, where possible, to hinge on that intrinsic property of the written word for which it is impossible for anyone who looks at it not to read it, as the word is read and decoded the moment it is seen.

The Movement for the Emancipation of Poetry
Florence, 2010