About us – Poetry Downtown Festival

501(c)(3)
The Poetry Downtown operates as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, focusing on education and literature, particularly the craft of poetry. Our mission revolves around fostering a deep appreciation for poetry, as well as encouraging its creation, reading, and spoken expression. We are committed to advancing the cause of poetry on a national scale and endeavor to bring poets together in a spirit of camaraderie and mutual comprehension.

Poetry Downtown Festival
Our festival starts each year in the city of birth and ends each year in the city of death of the poets we honor. In 2024 we honor Edgar Allan Poe and that’s why our festival starts in Boston and conclude in Baltimore.

Fight Illiteracy
It’s his goal to fight illiteracy by bringing together poets from of all over the world, at all levels and ages (online and offline) once a year in USA. He chose to organise this festival in English as it has become the most popular global language. He chose poetry above prose as a few words of poetry, an haiku for example, can already improve the skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing to say nothing of deeper comprehension. Poetry helps also to improve vocabulary, sentence formation, syntax, fluency and creativity.

Poetry Cab
Last year, Erik van Loon rented a car to promote his festival at 260 bookstores and 60 libraries along the route of the Poetry Train. This year, he will drive with a Poetry Cab and in each city/town a poet can earn a free ride in the Poetry Cab. Poets only need to write him a poem about their city/town and when they got selected, he will give them a free ride in the Poetry Cab. The Poetry Cab wil have a camera onboard as he will make a video from each poetry reading in the Poetry Cab. The selected poems will also appear in the Poetry Cab 2023 anthology.

Support
Poetry Downtown Festival is an independent festival and funded directly through the support of our participants, readers, contributors, supporters and sponsors. We still haven’t found enough funding to pay our poets, but we rejoice in and showcase the talent on through our festival, anthologies and site, along with sharing your work on our social media pages. Once a year we will publish two anthologies. One anthology with max 52 selected Poetry Downtown Festival poems, one zin with work from the poets on the Poetry Train and in 2023 for the first time also a Poetry Cab anthology.

About Erik van Loon

Poet
Erik van Loon don’t does not consider himself a poet. Nevertheless, has developed a new rhyme sheme has developed a form called New Paradox. It’s sonnet and it goes like ABAB ef CDCD ef GG. The ef ef couplets may be combined as a standalone poem and called an American Shorts. Not the shorts you wear but the plural of short as in tiny, little, etc. American Shorts are four-line poems.

Artist
As artist, Erik van Loon, is known for his I Will Win paintings for the NYC Marathon, his squatted garden at Van Loon Street in Queens, his 52 Dutch and 26 English opinion letters. As artist he use often languages also you can see in the three different work below.

I Will Win

(2005-2014)
10 I Will Win paintings of each 33 x 20 ft for the New York City Marathon

I Love DC

(Work in progress)
I Love DC is an artwork with 175 red and 75 black cars parked in an I [HEART] DC setting.

The Kineticus

(Work in progress)
The Kineticus is an artwork whereby the wind creates 27 different English trilateral words.

Activist
Besides artist, Erik van Loon can also be considered as an activist. He organise for example the Mermaid Parade in Europe, the Rotterdam Swim and Amsterdam Swim. With the revevue he clean up rivers each year in the Netherlands. Last year, he cleaned at World Water Day 12 rivers in the Netherlands.

Bookseller
In the past he also owned his own bookstore in the Netherlands called House Of Craziness. The bookstore is closed but he has plans to open two House Of Craziness bookstore in the US. House Of Craziness is also the publisher of the anthologies.

Contact
Cell: +31(0)6 3826 5666
Email: poetrydowntownfestival@gmail.com
Facebook/Instagram/Twitter: @poetrydowntown