Poesiplatsen

You can find manhole cover-poetry in several places in Gothenburg, but all the city’s manhole cover-poems are collected at Poesiplatsen outside the Gothenburg City Library. Manhole cover-poetry was born in Gothenburg in 2018 as part of the Rain Gothenburg initiative ahead of the city’s 400th anniversary. The idea was to spread poetry to places where it is rarely seen, while highlighting the city’s hidden infrastructure – the pipes and facilities that take care of the rain. In 2019, the project began with the poet Lina Ekdahl, who wrote the very first poem about rain. Since then, a new poet has been appointed every year to create their interpretation. The poem is cast into a number of manhole covers that will be replaced anyway, and in this way becomes part of the urban environment.