Warsaw’s metro system has began a three-week project aimed at bringing poetry closer to the man-in-the-street has been launched in Warsaw.

The special guest at the opening ceremony on Monday was the Icelandic poet, writer and musician Bragi Olafsson, a former bass player with Bjork’s Sugarcubes.   

The programme of the Warsaw project includes displays poems on the trains and stations but also includes exhibitions, competitions, happenings and city games. 

Poems by authors from 16 countries are featured this year, with work by poets from Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Great Britain, Greece, Holland, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Sweden.

The dominant themes are the city and  the European Year of Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion.

A festival of slam – a competitive combination of poetry and music - will bring together Laura Wihlborg from Sweden, Tatiana Daniliyants from Russia, Stefan Abermann from Austria, Keith Jarret from the U.K., Claus Ankersen from Denmark, Stephen James Smith from Ireland and Leandro Morgado from Portugal.

The organizers of the project, held in Warsaw for the third time, have been inspired by similar events in Dublin, Paris, New York, Barcelona, Stuttgart,  Moscow and London. In London, the tradition of ‘Poems on the Underground’ goes back to 1986.  (mk)