The World Poetry Day Manifesto Tunisia 2025

The World Poetry Day Manifesto
Tunisian house of poetry, March 21, 2025

On World Day of… Poetry
Youcef Khdimallah (former poet)
Translated by Ashref Kerkeni

1
Because days, weeks, months, and years roll on and pass by, definitively, stealing from
us, in a nearly constant state of heedlessness, our life that, no matter how long it may be, is
ultimately short—does one single day of the year suffice to take revenge on such a prosaic
truth, with a poetic trick that seems closer to a eulogy, a double eulogy ;
A eulogy for life, even if it’s prosaic
And a eulogy for poetry, even if it’s truly alive ?!
Is one single day of the year enough to restore its historical dignity and save it from
the bitter truth that it has become the outcast of the tribe—the tribe of the mainstream
market, which found in novelistic storytelling and its derivatives the legitimate offspring,
better suited to carry the projects of immediate material and symbolic profit, leaving poetry as
the dethroned king, draped in the fading glory of ancient pages and manuscripts, both of which
are prisoners of the museums' memory?
Couldn’t one, perhaps a skeptic like myself, argue that the mere preposition in "the
International Day of... Poetry" makes such an occasion seem more like the commemoration of

a disaster, calling for help, assistance, or advice—much like a plea for aid from a disabled
person, someone in need, or someone down on their luck ?
Isn’t this just a way to solidify a charitable cause, prepositioning support, solidarity,
or the adoption of a patient, a destitute, or a bankrupt individual on the verge of collapse ?

2
Is this the end of poetry, then?
So be it.
Wasn’t the twentieth century closed off with proclamations of endings, statements
carefully crafted in the laboratories of interdisciplinary research, where philosophers,
economists, and communication theorists gather, with behind them the directors of
intelligence agencies and the ideologies’ cross continents guards? These were the speeches
that "decided" the end of ideology and grand narratives, even of history and Man himself,
based on the eternal survival of the victorious liberal illusion—the only guarantor of the
freedom to produce and distribute its alleged global human good, the fairest of all, just as its
inevitable fate was penned by the comrade Fukuyama !?
Yes, "companion" Fukuyama !

Weren’t our leftist comrades, with all their ideological and political partisanship, the
first to rush to promote his groundbreaking scientific achievements in universities, schools,
and media outlets monopolized by the great global financial powers? In fact, even the poets
themselves—our brothers, the so-called "thieves of the sacred fire"—rushed into the same
arena and raised the banner of those "endings," in a moral chaos that turned them into
pioneers of a total "free creativity," devoid of conscience, which only secured them a safe
position within the institution that consumed everything under the banner of endings and the
haste for new beginnings:

The ready-made freedom, even if illusory.
The freedom of money and business, even if savage.
Thus, what sacred fire do our poets still prattle on about, here, to this day, when its
sole function seems to be, at best, a cosmetic one or, in their most optimistic cases, a romantic,
complaintive one against the prevailing discourse, so that they may remain in the illusion of
leadership and the mirage of sovereignty ?
Despite all of that, we might consider the following truth: With the current digital
electronic leap, and in the face of the looming threat of the proliferation of artificial
intelligence-driven robots, which are commercially scalable, the salvation of poetry might lie
in its very end—or more precisely, in its "ending" to the rhythm of a funeral song, not devoid
of the ideology of apocalyptic finales, which marks the beginning of the immortality of the
human elite, the survivors, in other worlds... An elite led by the supreme poet Elon Musk and
his companions!

3
Let us be less pessimistic, that is, positive, as urged by the poets, writers, and artists of
'human development,' or, why not, with the necessary caution, let us say that the longstanding issue accompanying poetry is not its atrophy or the danger of its extinction in the
dominant public discourse. Rather, it is its weak readability and visibility in the daily spectacle
of the cultural carnival. This is an inherent weakness in poetry, despite the occasional mass
surges during national or patriotic crises, with populist outcomes that turn it into the voice of
an incomplete, crippled uprising—a fragment of nostalgia for a cold, ancient glory that fades
as soon as the storm subsides—temporarily?"
And since the current culture has truly become a carnival, in a world ruled by the
market, business experts, and the marketing moguls whose craft has also become an art—
and, indeed, the technical and aesthetic reference for both authentic arts and commodities—

then the exclusion of poetry that does not conform to this is for its own good, and its distance
from it is its greatest virtue. The prevailing creative works, which engage in visual and
spectacular shows that do not require real actors, are nothing but material or commodities
disguised as art. Their obvious goal is entertainment, while their underlying purpose is the
obscuration and concealment of the complex alienation of the "citizen," who has now become
nothing more than a "consumer." Meanwhile, art is transfigured into a delightful and
entertaining mockery, but, in the end, it dulls consciences and gradually tames critical faculties,
perhaps the worst symptom of which is the dangerous atrophy threatening language as the
foundation and identity of human Being. In this context, what, then, can poetry accomplish?
It is true that art, in general, is, as Nietzsche warned us early on, nothing more than 'a
consolation for the cowards.' However, in serious reality, we can claim that the little poetry
can achieve is higher and more noble than much of what is called for. The mere existence of
the poet, as a daily worker of language, regardless of his accomplishment, affirms him as a
resistor or a dissenter from the pragmatic language system that prevails as the language of the
market, given that it is the wooden language that, unfortunately, has exported to the language
of literature and art its verbal reductionism and the poverty of its figurative imagination, thus
draining the sources of meaning's emergence despite the dazzling technical and formalistic
allure. This is what makes the poet, despite his engagement in the scene—under the pretext
of bending the new technologies and using them against the overwhelming false
consciousness of the market—the last guardian of language, as his original home, both first
and last.
However, this remains closer to an initial assumption, not generalizable, and only
partially confirmed by reality, particularly in some countries of the European center. It is true
that there is a return of poetry and poets to a direct visibility in the city—within the subway
tunnels, on the walls of both main and side streets, in parks and public squares, and most
importantly, in small, formless gatherings, independent of official structures. These gatherings
resemble small unions, bringing together poets, friends, neighbors, passers by ways and ideas
that advocate—through scaled-down activities—for a shared vision of poetry, creativity, and

culture, and especially for a life that contrasts with the present and future of the market. These
are activities with a quasi-familial character, treating what they produce with the sensibility of
traditional craftsmanship, not with the logic of the last modern technical maker.

4
Perhaps the calculated extremism in proclaiming the ends requires an uncalculated,
yet gentle and alert, extremism to break the chain and announce the longing for the springs of
beginnings... Beginnings of origin, the origin of nature and humanity, by affirming the noblest
aspects of both: the spirit of the absolute life force, as an opponent to the ends:
Death, absolutely. Death, which has now disguised itself in everything, even in art
itself.
Perhaps it is no longer appropriate to speak of a 'vanguard' to save the world, for
poetry, here and now, cannot do that. Perhaps it would be better if it could, at least, save us
from the world...
The world, as it moves toward its demise and our own.
In the space we stand upon now, claiming to be poets, this seems a very distant matter. For we
are not actors; we are closer to agents... agents of the system/institution, establishing, due to
intellectual inadequacy and moral failure, the ruin of meaning... a ruin that is closer to selfdestruction, of free, liberated life. And with no tragic consciousness of its finality, from this can
emerge a radical consciousness, a counter-knowledge, and an anti-aesthetics.
Perhaps today we are lacking the prophetic word of Rimbaud, despite its hesitation
and ambiguity, in his description of the poet:
'He is the great sick one, the great criminal, the great damned one...' Yet, he recovers
in the end: 'He is the greatest scholar'.

So, what can poetry accomplish today without knowledge?
At the very least, knowledge of the position of poetry and the poet in... the world...
A world where the poet himself, foolishly, repeats what the politicians of the
globalized market are promoting:
'The world of knowledge ?!'

F. p