For the second year, Three Rooms Press is proud to co-sponsor the International Underground Poetry Fest, celebrating experimental poetry and the contemporary and historic avant-garde and its artists, September 10-13 in Brussels, Belgium, transforming this medieval city into a fantastical world of experimental sound, visual and performance poetry.

The festival, organized by the internationally-acclaimed performance poet Philip Meersman (This Is Belgian Chocolate, Three Rooms Press 2014), will include academic seminars, an art exhibit, an art book fair, public poems, and the official Belgium launch of Three Rooms Press annual publication MAINTENANT 9: A JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY DADA WRITING AND ART.

The festival kicks off on Thursday, September 10 with an evening of performance poetry at the Planetarium of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, featuring readings by Meersman, Israeli poet a. rawlings, Belgium poets Maja Jantar and Vincent Tholomé; and others from around the world.

Friday, September 11 features a day of academic seminars on visual poetry’s past, present, and future, with discussions of “The poem as book as art,” “The End of Poetry on Paper,” and the 150th anniversary of the birth of Velimir Klebnikov, the founder of the experimental linguistic movement ZAUM. The seminars will be followed by a group public poem in Munt Square in central Brussels, and the opening of an Art Book Fair at the WIELS Contemporary Art Center.

Saturday starts with a morning public shopping poetry performance in Brussels main shopping district with live typewriter poems and interaction between participating poets and weekend shoppers. Hourly short performances, animations, and workshops will run in the afternoon at the WIELS center, culminating in a night of DADA with the MAINTENANT 9 launch at 6 pm, hosted by 3RP editors Kat Georges and Peter Carlaftes, followed by additional Dada performances from 10 pm to midnight at GC Esteem in the Jette community of Brussels.

Sunday wraps up with additional public poems at the Sunday Market in Jette and elsewhere, additional short performances throughout the afternoon at the WIELS center, and a closing ceremony at 5 pm, also at WIELS.

Admission to most events is free. Details can be found at http://poetryfest.brussels/index.html and breaking news will appear on twitter under the hashtag #Brusselspoetryfest.