The National Theatre will partner a group of seasoned poets to commemorate this year’s World Poetry Day with selected schools in Accra on March 21.

UNESCO first adopted March 21 as World Poetry Day during its 30th General Conference in Paris, to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and increase the opportunity for endangered languages to be heard.

Since the initiative’s inception, Poetry Day is celebrated annually throughout the world to promote the reading, writing, and teaching of poetry.

The theme for this year’s celebration is “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants”. A news brief from the National Theatre said the theme nodded to iconic writers of the past whose trailblazing works enlarged poetry’s footprint across cultures.

It described poetry as a type of literature that “conveyed a thought, described scenes or told a story in a concentrated, lyrical arrangement of words.  It is a beautiful form of expressing feelings and ideas in a unique and aesthetic manner. It creates a plethora of feeling and emotions. It explores the human condition and invokes emotion through words.”

The brief said the National Theatre sought to inculcate into young people the love for poetry and unearth their talents, creativity and interest in poetry writing.

“Poetry can have a positive impact on the social and emotional learning of children by offering them a new way of thinking as well as building their grammar and listening skills.

“The National Theatre in partnership with a group of seasoned poets will engage the students in poetry writing techniques and also share their experience with the schools.

“They will further construct poems based on the theme for the year in the form of a competition,” the news brief said.