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‘Poetry Tourism’ takes Ikeogu Oke to the U.S.

By Editor
09 November 2016   |   12:56 am
The poet Ikeogu Oke will launch a new initiative he calls “poetry tourism” during a forthcoming trip to the United States of America.
Ikeogu Oke

Ikeogu Oke

The poet Ikeogu Oke will launch a new initiative he calls “poetry tourism” during a forthcoming trip to the United States of America.

According to the poet, “Poetry tourism brings a new slant to conventional tourism. It takes the object of interest to the tourist whereas in conventional tourism the tourist goes to meet the object of interest. In this case the object of interest is poetry, which I believe needs the aggressive push of such an initiative to improve its standing with people around the world.”

The trip will last from today, November 9 through14, 2016. Oke is embarking on the trip with the support of the Highlights Foundation based in Pennsylvania, which holds round-the-year writing workshops on its campus “tucked away in the picturesque northeastern Pennsylvania Pocono Mountains, which solitude writers and artists need to produce their best work” and has granted Oke free tuition to attend one of its workshops titled “Everything You Need To Know About Children’s Book Publishing: A Crash Course.”

“I will be infusing the poetry tourism element into the workshop programme through the performance of my poems which the faculty have requested for. I also look forward to sharing my poetry with other attendees during the four-day event. I hope to make poetry, with its beauties and joys, better appreciated by my audience, in ways that justify Charles Baudelaire’s description of the art form as the queen of the faculties,” said Oke, whose interests include writing and publishing for children.  

Oke’s poems have been published in the United States since 1988, in journals including Unity Magazine and DISCOVERY, published by the Unity School of Christianity and the John Milton Society for the Blind, respectively; and in Happiness: The Delight-Tree (2015), ‘An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry in honour of the International Day of Happiness,’ published by the United Nations SRC Society of Writers.

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