Searching for the soul of the city
Inspiring Cities Museum of CityPoems
By Hans Karssenberg
01-01-2004 /views: 6841 in past 12 months.
Inspiring Cities has collected many citypoems over the years, as well as organized salons with citypoets and cities doing special projects. We have two criteria for what a citypoem is: the intention must be poetic, and it must be in the public realm of cities. Shapes, form and locations can and do differ.
The Museum of CityPoems has citypoems from cities all over the world. From Alhambra to Zonnebeke, from Taipei to Lima.
Is your city not listed below? Or do you have a CityPoem from somewhere else? Or, of course, one to add for your city?
Mail your photo and if possible description.
CityPoems in the Inspiring Cities collection so far:
Alhambra - the oldest citypoem?- Antwerp (1) - Boerentoren in love
- Antwerp (2) - on the river Schelde
- Antwerp (3) - Nasr on poverty
- Antwerp (4) - on 500,000 beer mats
- Antwerp (5) - on 30,000 door hangers
- Antwerp (6) - UtopiA
- Antwerp (7) - ZOO
- Antwerp (8) - train station
- Antwerp (9) - soul of Antwerp
- Amsterdam (1) - just on a door
- Amsterdam (2) - underneath a bridge
- Amsterdam (3) - Simon Vinkenoog
- Amsterdam (4) - subtly woven into a wall
- Barcelona (1) - who will help us translate?
- Barcelona (2) - inspiring a second Spanish life
- Beijing - water writing
- Bilston - local oral history record
- Brasilia
- poetry in the gutter - Bristol - 600 m city as canvas by Ralph Hoyte
- Budapest - one sentence about tyranny
- Buenos Aires - Borges on the mythical founding of BA
- Cairo - inviting passers by in for water
- Cape Town - to white South Africa
- Copenhagen - Christensen's Alphabet
- Delft - where Insping Cities' CityPoems started
- Detroit - derilict buildings
- Dublin (1) - Cafe Zanzibar
- Dublin (2) - internet poetry
- Dublin (3) - community gain?
- Dublin (4) - Guinness
- Dublin (5) - commemorating the Great War
- Dublin (6) - only dull people are brilliant at breakfast
- Dublin (7) - blogger's poetry
- Dublin (8) - open your eyes
- Dublin (9) - politics or poetry?
- Ghent - Luck Street
- Glendalough - St Kevin and the Blackbird
- Goslar - Jenny Holzer strikes again
Groningen - 232 m and hidden- Hamburg - 450 m2 poetry
- Hoorn - in the water
- India - on stamps
- Istanbul - benches like books
- Karachi - by the legendary Urdu poet Faiz
- Kyoto (1) - tanka poetry
- Kyoto (2) - tanka poetry again
- Leiden - 101 poems on Leiden's walls
- Lima - Parque del Amor / Love Park
- Lisbon - Pablo Neruda
- London - Jenny Holzer in cityscape
- Madrid - pirates
- Minneapolis - community art / Hafez
- New Town - informal poetry
- New York - after the 9/11 attacks
Newcastle - from the film Amélie- Nijmegen - poems for children
- Niteroi (Brazil) - the Portuguese tears the sea is made of
- Osaka - imperial poetry
- Paris (1) - who is MissTic?
- Paris (2) - wall poem
- Philadelphia - protesting against demolishing heritage
- Portland - Bertolt Brecht anti-war
- Prague (1) - Lennon wall
- Prague (2) - Jan Skácel, banned under communism
- Reykjavik - on the soul of Reykjavik
- Rome - Roman poet Trilussa
- Rotterdam (1) - mirroring the water of the Singel
- Rotterdam (2) - Surinam's national poem
- Rotterdam (3) - on waste disposal trucks
- Rotterdam (4) - Lucebert's neon poem
- Rotterdam (5) - Rotterdam's night mayer Deelder
- Rotterdam (6) - for the visitors of Blaak market
- Rotterdam (7) - on a children's hospital
- Rotterdam (8) - by Leopold
- Rotterdam (9) - haikus on the pavement
- Rotterdam (10) - boomp boomp
- Sabadell - African proverb
- San Juan, Puerto Rico - poetry reacting on mural
- San Francisco - Richard Brautigan
Santiago - Pablo Neruda- São Paulo (1) - De Andrade on the soul of Sao Paulo
- São Paulo (2) - in public drinkers, on transit, to carry out
- Shanghai - Pearl Tower built on poetry
- Sheffield - twinning with Mars
- Stockholm - in the asphalt of the city's busyiest street
- Székesfehérvár - chanting, old foot soldiers
- Taipei - on transformation
- Tel Aviv - can be read both horizontally and vertically
- Tokyo - who will help us translate?
- Utrecht (1) - arriving by train
- Utrecht (2) - a warm spring day
- Vancouver - Haircut
- Vienna (1) - pick a poem
- Vienna (2) - donaucity
- Wijk bij Duurstede - Marsman's national Dutch poem
- Zaandam - the soul of Zaandam, the Zaan
- Zonnebeke - architecture and poetry
Countries in the world with CityPoems in our Inspiring Cities collection so far:
create your own visited countries map
Also check the Inspiring Cities CityPoems & CityPoets Salon of 2006, including video presentations about CityPoems and CityPoets from Rotterdam and Antwerp:
Paul Kuijpers, CityPoet in Rotterdam Michaël Vandebril, CityPoets in Antwerp
Hans Karssenberg, Inspiring Cities CityPoems Jean Eigeman, Chairman
And check the review of the Inspiring Cities CityPoems.
Now tha we have seen the slums in African Lagos from the inside, what are the slums of South American Caracas like?
How can you transform one of the toughest parts of Amsterdam? For the outside world, De Wallen, the Red Light District, right in the most historic par
Lagos is the largest city in Nigeria and the fastest growing megacity in the world. Sixty years ago, less than 300,000 people lived there. Now, it's m
In Memoriam José Saramago.
What do all sunflowers have in common? They are stubborn, they are very hard to get rid of and they will grow almost anywhere. Ideal plants for gueril
In his definition of urban regeneration, Andrew Tallon outlines four key areas of significance for spatial development:
i. Economic (development)
ARTICLE ORDER: