Thursday mornings are now poetry mornings with new Estonian app
A free new app called Lullu brings poetry to your pocket, delivering a fresh Estonian poem straight to your phone every Thursday for a weekly literary lift.
The app was launched by the nonprofit Eesti Jutt, who first brought readers the "Estonian Novella" series eight years ago. Founder Armin Kõomägi said the project sprang from an effort to connect readers more directly with literature.
"Eesti Jutt's main focus is how to gain more readers and get closer to them," Kõomägi told ERR.
Poetry, he said, felt like a perfect fit for modern life. Yet, he added, reading poetry hasn't really caught on mainstream.
That's when the idea struck: instead of people going to poetry, poetry should come to people.
"The phone is a perfect medium—it fits on the screen, you scroll a bit up and down, and a lovely poem fits right on there," he said.
A three-member panel will select 52 poems over the course of a year, choosing works from as many different authors as possible. The selection team includes Berit Kachan and Joonas Veelma, both poets themselves.
"We try to choose texts that suit our Lullu app — ones that aren't too long or too heavy, something a bit lighter," Kõomägi said.
The app, he added, is for everyone, not just poetry lovers.
"It's meant to be inviting — 'Come on, take a look, poetry isn't scary!'" he said. "On the contrary, it's something delightful that can bring your day a new outlook."
A new poem appears every Thursday at 10 a.m. "That's when all of Estonia takes out their phones and reads the same poem," the founder quipped.
Available for Android and iOS, the Lullu app can be downloaded for free at lullu.ee.
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Editor: Karmen Rebane, Aili Vahtla
