In the future, the Dancing Bear award will be given by the Runousyhdistys Karhu - poetry can be seen and heard in Yle’s content in the future as well

The father of the Dancing Bear award is literary editor Juha Virkkunen (1941–2008), who edited the program I would like to hear this poem on Yle for over thirty years.

In the future, the Dancing Bear and Kääntäjäkarhu awards will be distributed by the newly founded Dancing Bear Association. Yle broadcasts the award ceremony on Yle Radio 1 as before.

Yle will start cooperation with Runousyhdistys Karhu, founded on May 3, 2023, in connection with the distribution of the Dancing Bear and Kääntäjäkarhu awards.

– Delightfully quickly, half a hundred citizens belonging to different reference groups wanted to promote poetry by keeping the Dancing Bear alive with the help of a new association, says the new chairman Leikola Yle in a press release.

Editor, writer Markus Leikola — The chairman of the new poetry association, Markus Leikola, is a journalist, poet and writer, whose pen has also produced two plays.

The association’s funds consist of membership fees, at least initially. Yle is still funding the Tanssiva karhu and Kääntäjäkarhu awards this year, but in the coming years the association will try to find funding for the award from the foundation field.

Since 1994, Yle has been giving out the Dancing Bear and Kääntäjäkarhu poetry awards. The decision to end the distribution of awards was related to Yle’s larger budget line, in which monetary awards are waived.

Upstairs, young people’s poetry content is in the works

– Yle will continue as the media partner of the Tanssiva karhu poetry award and will broadcast the award ceremony as before. In addition, the Tanssiva Karhu award is discussed in other Yle cultural content, for example in Yle Radio 1’s daily cultural current affairs program Kulttuuriykkösen. We are also working on a new entity focusing on young people’s poetry, says Vehkaoja.

– All in all, our goal is to strengthen Yle’s literary program offering, where poetry has its place. Of course, it’s still important to mention that the I would like to hear a poem program continues, as does the Päivä mietelause, where poetry is also heard.

The candidates for the Dancing Bear award will be announced at the Turku book fair at the turn of September-October, and the winner will be announced in Helsinki in November together with Teksti talo. The recently founded text house – Textens hus ry, which broadly unites actors in the literary field, promotes artistic and scientific literature and supports cooperation between actors in the field. The office premises of the text house will be opened in Helsinki’s Sörnäis next autumn. Funding for the start of the association’s activities was granted by the Kone Foundation in 2021.

The schedule, jury and other details of the 2023 Dancing Bear Award will be announced later.