Early Poetry

On October 1st 2013, the official end of the holidays, Bucharest subway passengers had a surprise on their way to work or school. The walls of an entire subway carriage had been decorated with poems carefully placed on Post-its, ready to be taken off and kept at home as a souvenir. At the morning press conference, key opinion leaders shared the importance poetry plays in their daily lives. The surprise continued in the afternoon, when a new poetry subway brightened up the passengers’ day on their way back home.
This was the first gesture through which we brought poetry closer to people.

On October 25th 2013, more than 6,300 people created poems or rhymes or verses, without being artists, poets, musicians or copywriters. The poems, written down on napkins, were used as currency in exchange for a Julius Meinl coffee in many coffeehouses all over Romania, where, for an entire day, a cost of a coffee wasn’t expressed in money, but in … lyrics.

This was the first time we turned poetry into currency for a day.

On November 15th 2013 Julius Meinl presented a House entirely dedicated to Poetry in Bucharest. The coffeehouse, situated in Bucharest, was equipped with a robot writing the poems of our generation straight on to the coffeehouse walls, all day long. Poems were written by the robot – in real time – as they arrived from consumers via a special online application on our Facebook page. Launching this space using a poet-robot shows every one of us that poetry can be relevant even in this century of speed and technology.