Philip Meersman is a multilingual poet, curator, moderator, and PhD candidate at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. He has performed at some of the most important poetry festivals in the world and is the initiator and co-founder of the ivzw World Poetry Slam Organization aisbl, a worldwide network of national slam competitions. He coordinates the itinerant European & World Championships Poetry Slam and has published two collections of poetry in English and one in Dutch.
Meersman coordinates the project 'Urban Travel Machines' combining a new generation of poets with planetarium dome projection technology creating live-virtual performances. Meersman’s poetry often explores socio-political and environmental topics, and he is known for engaging with audiences in co-creating instant poetry based on prompts given by the audience. Meersman turns his poems into sculptural, location-bound works of art, dates them as visual artists do and provides them with a marker of the creation location and the used writing techniques and materials. His poetry books are therefore not only collections of poetry, but also a travel chronicles and exhibition catalogues. Next to performing, Meersman also writes, talks and teaches about poetry in all its forms during lectures, workshops and in all forms of publications.