City of Poets
During times of turmoil, poetry offers a safe haven – yet it can also resound with all its might. Best thing is that good poems can do both at the same time!
“Poets were once people with a gift for words. Perhaps today those words also include those left unsaid,” said Czesław Miłosz in a speech published in Beginning With My Streets, whose title serves as the motto of the 6th Miłosz Festival. Poets coming to Kraków for the event will read and say many things, but the silences between words are just as important – as is our own response to them. “Without self-analysis we will not accomplish anything in this world which is mainly our own street and a private view from a window,” says Krzysztof Siwczyk, artistic director of the festival. But we must note two common streets. This year’s festival centre is at Kanonicza Street, at the Bishop Erazm Ciołek Palace and Bona, the official festival bookshop (the perfect place to get volumes from the expanding publishing efforts of the Miłosz Festival). The official festival club, Metaforma Cafe, is at Powiśle Street at the Powiśle 11 pavilion.
Personal and political
Kraków welcomes great individuals, including Robert Pinsky – an icon of American poetry and Poet Laureate Consultant to the US Library of Congress at the turn of the millennium. His Favorite Poem Project engaged thousands of Americans from all walks of life in sharing their favourite writings so that personal thoughts could be communicated to the public by everyone. Films resulting from the project offer further proof of poetry’s power.
The festival also welcomes Antije Krog from South Africa. Her poetry touches on personal women’s issues, and she doesn’t shy away from other political subjects such as the brutal apartheid regime, questions of national unity in South Africa and gender issues. She is also the author of children’s poetry filled with magical imagery.
Other important festival guests are Adam Zagajewski and Ewa Lipska, representatives of the acclaimed New Wave of Polish poetry. Their starting point was a distrust of the language used by the communist regime, and they both shaped highly influential models of lyricism acclaimed in Poland and abroad.
Their peer, the German poet, diplomat and intellectual Joachim Sartorius, is the author of highly artistic yet accessible forms. He has much to say about the beneficial role of poetry as a mediator. He is highly influenced by English language poetry – as is the Austrian experimental poet Evelyn Schlag whose works tend to express uneasiness more than hope. Some of this disquiet is the result of important historical events, such as Austria’s Nazi past.
Power and precision
The festival also welcomes young poets engaged in the literary lives of their countries. Petr Hruška is one of the most important Czech authors writing since the Velvet Revolution. He enjoys surprising and exciting his readers with his avant-garde ideas. Linn Hansén represents thirty-something Sweden, writing for two literary collectives and numerous artistic projects. She is fascinated by difficult subjects – and, let’s face it, her poetry expresses that.
Young Polish poets include Urszula Zajączkowska. A trained botanist and filmmaker, she writes fascinating poems about nature with a scientific precision. Her debut collection Atoms was nominated for the Wrocław Poetry Prize Silesius 2015.
For the second time during the Miłosz Festival, we discover the winner of another important distinction: the Wisława Szymborska Award. This year’s shortlist includes Tomasz Bąk’s [beep] generation, Jerzy Kronhold’s Skok w dal, Tomasz Różycki’s Litery, Marcin Sendecki’s W and Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki’s Nie dam ci siebie w żadnej postaci. The meeting with the winner will be hosted on the final day of the festival by Tomasz Fiałkowski.
Beyond the main
Initiated in 2016 to introduce an alternative note to the festival, this year’s OFF Miłosz cycle gets off to a good start. It brings together performers, poets and slammers from the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Slovakia, the US, the UK and Poland, appearing at Kraków’s clubs and cafés. The inaugural evening of OFF Miłosz is a duel between Kristóf Horváth and Weronika M. Lewandowska who transform works by poets from the main part of the festival into a multimedia format during the performance Remix. We also meet an international group of alternative poets during the weekend Kraków Book Fair held at Św. Marii Magdaleny Square.
Something for everyone
The festival programme also features debates with the participation of eminent literary critics, a Miłosz Lecture (this year delivered by Tadeusz Sławek), workshops, film screenings and poetry concerts. During the first evening, the festival centre hosts the formation Julia i Nieprzyjemni with their project Wojaczek, while the finale at ZetPeTe presents material from Ladinola, the latest album by Pablopavo i Ludziki. The family concert Julek Tuwim’s Pudding features the Ferdinand the Great Award gala – one of the crossovers between the Miłosz Festival and the Children’s Literature Festival. After all, poetry brings together all forms of the arts and all generations!
Igor Kuranda, Karnet magazine
