This week, literary Christmas cards will be delivered to eleven Frisian Food Banks, which Leeuwarden UNESCO City of Literature has developed in collaboration with six authors and an illustrator for the more than 1,500 clients and volunteers of the food banks. City of Literature wants to support them just before the holidays. The organization also hopes that the campaign will generate publicity for the food banks, which are in urgent need of support and products.
The clients and volunteers receive a set of six unique cards and a “Molkwarder Koeke” (gingerbread). For the maps, Leeuwarden UNESCO City of Literature approached the poets and writers who would give a lecture during (eventually canceled due to corona) Poetry Dinners this autumn. The assignment: write a poem or an ultra-short story about food. Marije Roorda, Edwin de Groot, Anne Feddema and Martin Reints wrote a (free) verse, Joost Oomen and Nicole van den Berg wrote a short story. Willie Darktrousers made a suitable illustration for all texts.
The promotion is in line with the goal of Leeuwarden UNESCO City of Literature to make literature from Friesland accessible to everyone, for example by sharing poems and stories in unexpected places and moments. It is also a follow-up to the action in April of this year in which poetry cards were delivered to 88 small and large-scale nursing homes in the province of Fryslân for the more than 5,000 residents.
Picture (at food bank Harlingen): Marc de Fotograaf
