Philip Meersman

Philip Meersman is a multilingual poet, curator, organiser, moderator and PhD candidate at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. He has performed at some of the most important poetry festivals in the world, and is the initiator and co-founder of the ivzw World Poetry Slam Organization aisbl, a worldwide network of national slam competitions. He coordinates the itinerant European & World Championships Poetry Slam, and has published two collections of poetry in English and one in Dutch. His third English language poetry book will be published in Spring 2024 and his second Dutch language poetry collection “Het Omstanderseffect” will be released on December 8th, 2023 by Boekscout Publishers.

Meersman participated at some of the most important poetry festivals in the world.

• Struga Poetry Evenings, Macedonia: 2005, 2008, 2023
• Curtea Poetry Nights, Curtea d’Arges, Romania: 2006
• Teranova festival, Metz, France: 2006, 2007
• Nissan International Poetry Festival, Mughar, Israël: 2007
• Poetry in the Park, Vienna, Austria: 2007
• Rosario Poetry Festival, Argentina: 2008
• Antares poetry festival, Romania: 2009
• International Literature festival of Tallinn HeadRead, Tallinn, Estonia: 2010
• “Hullunud Tartu” festival, Tartu, Estonia: 2010, 2012, 2019
• Portuguese Slam Championships, Lisbon, Portugal: 2014
• Experimental and Slam Poetry Festival Craiova: 2015, 2016
• Kritya Poetry Festival, Trivandrum, India: 2017
• Mexico MX Slam: 2018
• Poetry Africa, Durban, South-Africa: 2018, 2022
• Cyprus International Poetry Festival: 2019
• Cameroun International Poetry Festival (online): 2021
• Medellin International Poetry Festival, Medellin, Colombia (online): 2021
• Poetas D’Alma, Maputo, Mozambique: 2021
• Calebasse Club, Lomé, Togo, 2022
• Crete International Poetry Festival, Greece, 2022
• Nairobi poetry writing workshop, Kenya, 2022, 2023
• Nairobi poetry writing and performing masterclass, Kenya, 2023, 2024
• Festival international de slam/poésie en Acadie, Canada, 2023
• International Poetry Festival Serres, Greece, 2023
• Guadalajara International Book Fair, Guadalajara, Mexico, 2023

In addition to performing, Meersman also writes and talks about poetry in all its forms, art and art history within the socio- and geopolitical context. His poetry often explores socio-political and environmental topics, and he is known for engaging with audiences in co-creating instant poetry based on prompts given by the audience.

His texts about poetry:

• “Préface”, La Méthode Slam!, Julie Lombé, 2023
• The trance of the read verbal artifact: https://www.versopolis.com/times/essay/1...
• Occupied City:  Visual Poetry - Performance Poetry:  Lecture at AP University College Antwerp for students of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts & the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, April 16th, 2021 https://www.academia.edu/video/kxGEel
• One Way of Looking at Vispo: https://academia.edu/resource/work/8703199
• Visual Poetry, a toolbox for research. Lecture during the I International Colloquium of Visual Poetry: Research and Creation, online, Brazil: https://www.jornadadepoesiavisual.com/cópia-mostra
• Inleiding tot een leesstrategie en een ontleding van Geladen gedichten (Luc Fierens) en M.N.M’’L (Sven Staelens): https://ooteoote.nl/2016/10/inleiding-to...
• Workshop on Visual Poetry by Philip Meersman at KZNSA: https://academia.edu/resource/work/44642724
• How to Analyse Visual Poetry at the Annual Conference of the Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies, Poetry - A Sublime Startle, 100 year celebration of the birth of Ilmar Laaban https://www.kirmus.ee/laaban-100/CEES202...
• Nawoord (Epilogue), essay in the artist’s book Frie J. Jacobs 2012-1992, September 2013
• Poëzie als passie en revolutie (Poetry as Passion and Revolution), essay in Rekto:Verso, Nr. 56, March - April 2013
• De orale interpretatie van visuele poëzie (The Oral Interpretation of Visual Poetry), essay in catalogue 'Getekende klank' (Drawn Sounds), Central Library of the Catholic University of Leuven by Matrix vzw, November 2013
• Visuele poëzie een tentoonstelling (Visual Poetry an Exhibition), essay in catalogue ‘Visuele Poëzie’ (Visual Poetry) in the Goretti Chapel, Tilburg, November 2012

Meersman is Master in Art Sciences and Archeology at the Flemish Free University of Brussels.
Currently he is doing a PhD at the AP University College of Antwerp on the transformation of visual poetry into an immersive XR-experience. https://www.ap-arts.be/project/orale-uit...

Reviews:
This Is Belgian Chocolate:
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2015/04/book...
http://www.tzum.info/2014/08/recensie-ph... -meersman-belgian-chocolate /

There Is Blue Somewhere
There Is Blue Somewhere is not only a collection of poetry, but also a travel chronicle and exhibition catalog. Meersman turns his poems into sculptural, location-bound works of art, and dates them, just as visual artists do. He also provides his poems with a marker of the creation location and defines the used writing techniques and materials. There Is Blue Somewhere opens on an ocean teeming with humanity and its various waste products. This surreal vista that Philip Meersman paints is 'Mare Nostrum': a mirror image of the mess we have created. Over fat mountains, across a Mediterranean filled with hopeless life-rafts, and through dronefilled war-zones, crowds of beggars, and swarms of social media influencers, no human foible escapes Meersman's caustic, socially conscious gaze.

(T)he lines in There Is Blue Somewhere are perfect companions for helping to realize that the way we go somewhere may be more important than wherever we think we’re trying to get.
Mark Wallace, Professor in the Literature department at California State University San Marcos
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This impassioned, witty, elegiac book captures the performative power of Meersman's work on the page, (...) These are unflinching poems that defy the reader to ignore the message they carry: that we must change our lives.
Jessica Traynor, writer, dramaturg and creative writing teacher based in Dublin
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This is the endeavor that is rooted deep in the cultural heritage of Europe but free and solo in the vast ocean of our post-singularity future. There got to be Blue Somewhere.
Yasuhiro Yotsumoto, poet based in Japan
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Philip Meersman is blue. So is his newest book. (...) Like the water of life, reflecting heaven. Blue like eternity. (...) that’s what this beautiful poetry collection is about: possibility.
Sharon Mesmer, multi-genre writer and creative writing prof / techno-marm at NYU and the New School.
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These poems are to be read by all of us, quietly, in the mind and feel in the soul.
Rati Saxena, poet, writer,  translator, editor and festival director of kritya International poetry festival, India.
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Meersman’s poems are as real as they are surreal, as rooted to the ground as they are ethereal. This collection is a quirky and unforgettable masterpiece.
Nkateko Masinga, South-African author of Psalm for Chrysanthemums currently living in Kenya

Other projects:
Philip Meersman is curator of the Brussels Planetarium Poetry Fest (https://poetryfest.brussels) and initiator and cofounder of the ivzw World Poetry Slam Organization aisbl, a worldwide network of national slam competitions. (https://www.worldpoetryslam.org) He coordinates the itinerant organization of the inclusive European & World Championships Poetry Slam.

He coördinates the Creative Europe funded project Urban Travel Machines which combines a new generation of slam poets with the technology of planetarium dome projections and creating a live-virtual performance portal. https://www.ap-arts.be/project/urban-tra...

In 2023 he is artistic manager for Transpoesie, organised by EUNIC Brussels and he works with Brussels 2030 to coordinate the setup of the function of Poet Laureate of the Brussels Capital Region or “Public Poet Brussels”.

With his collaborative immersive live improv performances he engages with audiences in co-creating instant poetry based on prompts given by the audiences and interacting with the live drawing in the project of Janna Beck, Drawing Resilient Futures. 
Imagining Sustainable Coping Strategies with regards to climate change in low-income urban areas through the digital arts. https://www.ap-arts.be/en/research/drawi...
 

Projects on location:

• “Boetedoening”, procession within the framework of the presentation of the first copy of my book Manifest voor de poëzie at De Groene Waterman in 2012, Antwerp: https://youtu.be/VaWI8bfcPs0
• Battlefield poetry, a Manifesto, Performance Festival Belgium – KASKA, 18.12.2013 - 19.12.2013, Antwerp, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMwYDO-x...

DAstrugistenDA-performances:
2006: Fireworks poem without fireworks during the Portus Ganda Festival in Ghent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joWa2fkfYK4
2008: 72u-non stop live performance during BxlBravo-festival, locked up in Beursschouwburg as protest to Guantanomo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em4cUgfS...
2010: Breda BUTFF-festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BzQEzTZ...
2010: Breda BUTFF-festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjmiWpVqdV8

Classical performances:
2022: South Africa

• Poetry Picnic In The Courtyard, Howard College Theatre (02:43:00), University of KwaZulu Natal: https://www.youtube.com/live/oppM43d_eXw...
• Connect The Poets / Right To Speak Closing Event (02:08:00), Howard College Theatre, University of KwaZulu Natal: https://www.youtube.com/live/JOS4E_dIIZc...

2018: South Africa: Philip Meersman, Poetry Africa 2018, Center of Creative Arts, University of KwaZulu Natal: https://youtu.be/6gkgsLaE-fE

2018: Mexico: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DEe7X52RoE

2017: India: Philip Meersman at kritya International Poetry Festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz_BXC6-...

2010: Estonia: Suur Prõmm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxZNVVH3mqc

2008: Argentina: Rosario International Poetry Festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnb1R4gq4u4

2006: M hka, Antwerp

• TimeWaveZero, TryOutDef Poetry Performance Philip Meersman & Fjorton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESzVbkgeiuo
• TimeWaveZero, Poetry Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jthonjUtCs

Impro—musical-collaborations:
Live improv Drawing Resilient Future at KCAP, Durban, South Africa (2022):

Collaboration of improv poetry and live drawing by Wouter Steel, Modise Sekgothe and an MA student of the Digital Arts department of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, coordination & concept by Janna Beck from AP Hogeschool.
Performed at KCAP, Art Center in Durban, South-Africa during Poetry Africa 2022 with the support of Flanders Literature.
The audience would throw words at the poet who started to improvise poetry with these words. The people drawing would take that as inspiration to draw the projected images which were than projected onto the poet as canvas: https://youtu.be/FC8-6a8pC9A?si=3c7m8aYy...

Frietje Wasabi with Janna Beck (AP): txt impro & e-drawing impro (2021):

FRAMED presents “frietje wabisabi”, 22 oktober live from A'pex gallery, leopoldstraat 5 by Framed for VISI.ON.AIR
Art direction Janna Beck & Wouter Steel
Software by Kris Meeusen
Live camera by Tom Dietvorst
Live animation by Wouter Steel, Maximillian Rittler, Pé De Hertog, Frederik Schnieders, Pieter Van Der Donckt en Denie Put
Special Guest: Dr Philip Meersman
Graphic design by studio same-same
https://youtu.be/8Dvb9Kc3CuE

VAXX.ON.AIR live txt & music impro with projection (2021):
Transformed into a cozy chill cave, the Winter Garden indulges you to break all ties and bond with what really matters… your mind disconnects, your senses take over, resistance is futile…We will show you the door and urge you to walk through it.
Maxlab and CREATIE take you on an immersive meditation session into the “Desert of the Real”. We plug you in so you can liberate yourself and connect, relax and charge the batteries. Empty your mind and let it all go! ‘VAXX.ON.AIR’ is your visual vaccination, from your brain straight into the depths of the rabbit hole.
Connecting you to the hive:
Janna Beck (visual design), Yanis Berrewaerts (landscapes), Tom Dietvorst (ICT support), Umut Eldem (synthesizer, electronics), Wim Henderickx (percussion, electronics), Philip Meersman (text, voice/effects & brainwave concept), Thomas Moore (trombone, electronics), Kristof Timmerman (scenography, brainwave concept & jumper cable), Ine Vanoeveren (flutes, electronics & brainwave concept)
‘VAXX.ON.AIR’ is powered by research groups MAXlab (Academy) and CREATIE (Conservatoire): https://youtu.be/U-hreBldZmM

OPUS I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkvrK-VHCJ8

2017: Sint-Niklaas with the Jean Demey trio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8EThttOgp8

ArtiestencollectiefJA!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti...

Cro§in’X 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYMRq9nmjrs
https://vi.be/platform/crossinx

Collaboration with Matete Motsoaledi: https://open.spotify.com/track/670kValqT...

Marathon TV-show host: https://youtu.be/zFw3a5OcfEI