Milan International Poetry Festival

A Day of Poetry at MUDEC

The Milan International Poetry Festival transforms the MUDEC — Museum of Cultures, at Via Tortona 56 (Municipality 6, Tortona area), into a large space dedicated to the poetic word for an entire day. From morning until evening, the museum's central square hosts readings, performances, book presentations, debates, conferences, and music, with the participation of numerous voices and realities from the city.

The 2026 Theme: Praise of Fragility

The 2026 edition's theme is "Praise of Fragility". As explained by the artistic director Milton Fernández, publisher and founder of Rayuela Edizioni, poetry is a tool for knowledge and a form of civil resistance, and fragility represents that which trembles and is therefore alive: from vulnerable adolescence to enduring memory, to fluid identity that crosses different languages and geographies.

A Plural and International Program

The festival offers a rich and varied program: poetry and emotional writing workshops with high schools, the creative writing project in prison Beyond Obstacles, a tribute to Stefano Benni with jazz accents, Poetry Slam performances, the poetry of Brazilian indigenous women, a panel on creative identity across borders (The Language I Live In), the presentation of an anthology of civil poetry, a tribute to Gabriela Mistral, Nobel Prize winner in 1945, and the installation Winter Sonnet by artist Chiharu Shiota.

Poetry as a Common Good

Alongside live events, the festival promotes an International Poetry Prize for unpublished works in Italian, with publication and an invitation to the festival as recognition for the winners. Free and open to all, the Milan International Poetry Festival is an opportunity to rediscover poetry as a living language, capable of speaking to the present and creating dialogue between different cultures, generations, and geographies, in the heart of Milan.