Schamrock-Festival at the virtual Versopolis "Festival of Hope"

A few weeks ago the European Poetry Platform Versopolis announced its virtual poetry "Festival of Hope" and invited international festivals and literary organisations to participate. More then 60 organisations announced to be part of that great effort.

On April 29th, Schamrock Poetry and Schamrock-Festival of Women Poets will have their contributions presented on the Versopolis platform.

Schamrock has been planning the October 2020 issue of its International Poetry Biennial - Schamrock-Festival of Women Poets when the Corona virus crisis interfered. The festival is scheduled October 23rd to 25th in Munich, Germany, with its traditional prelude in Vienna, Austria on October 21st, and we still are holding on to our plans.

However, the ongoing situation makes it next to impossible to predict how matters directly influencing our program will develop (for example travel restrictions). Also, as we are not part of, or backed by any institution, the current status of our sponsorships remains quite unclear. But in any case we stay optimistic to stage the festival, though we may have to adjust its form.

For the Versopois platform we chose four poets that are invited for the 5. Schamrock-Festival of Women Poets 2020: Miriam Calleja (Malta), Lisa Jeschke (Germany), Phoebe Power (England) and Nora Zapf (Germany). In addition we present excerpts from two legendary performances at previous festival issues, Anne Waldman in 2018, and Lydia Lunch in 2016. And last but not least we show a clip of the performance of Kunst oder Unfall / Art or Accident with Brooklyn Ballet in New York 2019, this collaboration with choregrapher and founding director of the Ballet, Lynn Parkerson, started at the festival in 2018.