Asturias fills with verses to celebrate World Poetry Day

Asturias marked World Poetry Day on 21 March, proclaimed by UNESCO, with a programme spread across the region that highlights both the vitality of poetic creation and its deep-rooted presence in everyday life. Readings, musical performances and participatory activities brought poetry to squares, schools, cultural venues and even unexpected spaces, reinforcing the idea of a community that experiences poetry in an open and shared way.

One of the main hubs of the celebration was Villaviciosa, where the Plaza de la Poesía hosted the third edition of its poetry marathon. Around thirty participants, including students, writers and local residents, took part in an event that combined poetry readings with live music. Pupils from San Rafael school and Víctor García de la Concha secondary school gave voice to the poems, sometimes accompanied by keyboard music, while authors such as Yurisán Menéndez, Tina Villar and María Barredo shared their work alongside Asturian-language poets Pablo X Suárez, Rosa Amado and Lourdes Álvarez. The event was punctuated by performances from bagpiper Francisco Fernández Álvarez and concluded with a poem dedicated to spring by María Luisa Picado Amandi.

The celebration extended beyond the event through initiatives such as “La Villa en verso”, which brought poetry into shop windows and streets, integrating verse into daily life. This effort to take poetry beyond traditional spaces was also visible in other parts of Asturias, such as Avilés, where poetry readings with musical accompaniment took place in both the airport and a shopping centre, engaging travellers and the general public in everyday settings.

This collective programme, partly driven by the initiative “Asturias, World Capital of Poetry”, reflects a distributed, participatory and accessible cultural model, where poetry moves beyond conventional venues and becomes part of social life. An approach aligned with the values of Oviedo’s bid to become European Capital of Culture 2031.