Belgian born multilingual poet and performer PHILIP MEERSMAN pushes the boundaries with poetry, in both written and spoken form, drawing on current affairs, sociopolitical and environmental issues. His poems range from narrative and traditional form to directives for performance pieces, to concrete studies of sound, individual words and even letters themselves.

His work has been performed in more than 13 countries and translated into more than 15 languages. He is a co-founder of DAstrugistenDA, artiestencollectief JA! BruSlam, be.poetic VZW, a member of the Akademia Zaum and curator of the experimental Brussels Poetry Fest. He is co-ordinator of the Belgian and European Championships Slam Poetry and the informal European Network of Poetry Slam Championships, and is setting up the worldwide participatory based UNESCO world championships of slam poetry.

Meersman studied Archaeology and Art History in Brussels, and is currently working on a PhD in the Arts at the Royal Academy of Arts in Antwerp where he will seek to perform visual poetry, performance strategies for visual poetry based upon the writings and theories of Rene Magritte, Velimir Chlebnikov and the Russian Cubo-Futurists.

He published This is Belgian Chocolate: Manifestations of Poetry (2014) at Three Rooms Press in New York.