A weekend with poetry on Polish Radio Three

The coming weekend on Polish Radio Three will be very poetic. First, in the Radiowy Dom Kultury programme (12 p.m.-2 p.m.), Paulina Małochleb, secretary of the Wisława Szymborska Award, will talk about the preparations for the first ever gala of the Wisława Szymborska Award – only a few hours before the event begins. A day later, we would like to invite you to tune in for Magazyn Bardzo Kulturalny (which begins at 7 p.m.) – President of the Wisława Szymborska Foundation Michał Rusinek and the Award’s jurors have confirmed their participation in the programme. Please note: we will also have a chance to listen to the Award’s winner. Barbara Marcinik would like to invite everyone to the live broadcast straight from Szymborska’s Drawer at the Szołayski House – a Branch of the National Museum in Krakow.

Thursday, the 14th of November, 6 p.m.
The Księgarnia Pod Globusem bookstore, ul. Długa 1, Krakow

The Księgarnia Pod Globusem bookstore would like to invite you to a meeting with the author of Głaskologia, Miłosz Brzeziński. The meeting will be hosted by Magdalena Miśka-Jackowska.

Głaskologia is a popular-scientific book, unique in every respect. Every Pole should read it. Each parent, boss, subordinate, politician, journalist, coach, each husband and wife, each seller and accountant… Everyone who wants to feel good for longer than for a few moments and everyone who wants to have a positive influence on others and give them a boost of energy. Everyone who wants to keep their job, get a promotion or build a relationship based on trust, understanding and permanent interest in the other person.

Miłosz Brzeziński is a business consultant, mentor of AIP Business Link, member of the Think Tank council of experts, certified coach of the International Coaching Community, and academic teacher. He published tens of articles on using psychology in business. He is the author of five provocative books on implementing changes in the work environment and the home environment: Pracować i nie zwariować, Biznes czyli kupa ludzi, Życiologia, Jak pies z Kotem, and Głaskologia. He also made a guest appearance in Dekalog Szczęścia as an expert on organising the business environment. He also expresses his opinions and comments in magazines such as Duży Format and Playboy and newspapers such as Gazeta Wyborcza and Polska The Times. He has his own column on psychology at work in the InterCity train magazine W podróży. Miłosz Brzeziński carries out analyses on the air of TVN, TVN CNBC, TVP, the Polish Radio, RMF, and Antyradio. He is a regular weekly guest of the morning programme on Polish Radio Four.

We encourage you to check out the author’s blog at: www.miloszbrzezinski.pl

Admission is free. You are most welcome to come!

Have you always wanted to become a writer? Do you feel you have literary potential? You only need motivation to write a book? Take part in the NaNoWriMo campaign – the National Novel Writing Month. We would like to invite all those who write to take up the challenge and write 50,000 words in a month. NaNoWriMo (the National Novel Writing Month) is a popular campaign – in 2012 alone, 340,000 future writers from all over the world participated and altogether, they wrote 3,288,976,325 (3.28 billion) words.

The rules are simple. You just need to create an account at www.nanowrimo.org and then just write your novel until the 30th of November. Each day on the website, you can update the information about the number of words you have written, and between the 25th and the 30th of November, use a special form to verify whether you managed to exceed the magical threshold of 50,000 words. Winners will receive special certificates and… immense satisfaction.

50,000 words, i.e. about 300,000 characters – this gives us an average of 1,666 words (nearly 10,000 characters) per day. This is quite a lot, but such writing productivity is possible. During 57 years of his work, Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, a titan of Polish novel writing, wrote 232 novels, which gives us an average of 4 books per year (and this calculation does not include numerous short stories and feature articles of his authorship). So what is the recipe for crossing the NaNoWriMo threshold? As Dorothy Parker, American writer, best-known as a portraitist of 20th-century metropolises, used to say: “Writing is the art of applying your behind to the seat”.

Outstanding composer Joachim Mencel composed great music for some less well-known, “non-obvious” poems by Julian Tuwim. Fresh compositions, filled with energy in new jazz arrangements will be performed by young musicians and singers. We will hear an interpretation of Tuwim’s works that no one expects…

Dancers will also appear on stage – thanks to interesting and intriguing choreography (by Anita Podkowa and Aleksander Kopański), they will offer a dance interpretation of the texts. A combination of music, contemporary dance, and poetry will make it possible to create an exceptional, unique performance.

The premiere will take place on the 22nd of November at 7:15 p.m. on the Stanisław Wyspiański stage at the Ludwik Solski Academy for the Dramatic Arts (PWST) on ul. Straszewskiego 22. Free tickets will be available for pick-up from the 18th of November at the PWST box office (from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.).

The compositions prepared as part of the project will then be recorded at a professional studio and filmed. Rehearsals have been taking place for quite some time now. You can see a description of the undertaking and take a glimpse of what awaits the audience during the premiere at the project’s website at www.tuwim.poeciwkrakowie.pl and on its Facebook page. Videos documenting the undertaking are available at tuwim.poeciwkrakowie.pl.

The project is carried out by the OKO Promotional Agency and was commissioned by the Book Institute in connection with the Julian Tuwim Year. Its partners are the Krakow School of Jazz and Contemporary Music and the Kazimierz Bartel Foundation. High School No. 30 and Secondary Schools No. 36 and 46, as well as the Student Government of the Faculty of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian University cooperate with the organisers. The media patrons are Radio Kraków, TVP Kultura, and Dziennik Polski.

Five nominees: Justyna Bargielska for her volume Bach for my baby, Krystyna Dąbrowska for Białe krzesła, Łukasz Jarosz for Pełna krew, Krzysztof Karasek for Dziennik rozbitka, and Jan Polkowski for Głosy are competing for the Wisława Szymborska Award, awarded for the first time this year. We will find out who the winner is in two weeks (on Saturday, the 16th of October) during a festive gala at the Malopolska Garden of Arts. The Gala will be held under the honorary patronage of the President of the Republic of Poland Bronisław Komorowski and it will be broadcast by the TVN24 channel. The Gala will be hosted by actress Agata Kulesza, and the event will include a concert of Aga Zaryan, who will present compositions from her latest album, Remembering Nina & Abbey, dedicated to the figures of Nina Simone and Abbey Lincoln.

The Wisława Szymborska Award, awarded for the first time this year, is an international prize granted for a volume of poetry published in Polish (originally written in Polish or translated into Polish from another language). The winner will receive a statuette and a cheque for PLN 200,000. The winner will be selected by a jury including: Anders Bodegård (Sweden), Clare Cavanagh (USA), Maria Delaperriere (France), Luigi Marinelli (Italy), Abel Murcia Soriano (Spain), Adam Pomorski (Poland), Renate Schmidgall (Germany), and Marian Stala (Poland).

The Wisława Szymborska Award aims at popularising poetry. “We want to attract the attention of both readers and publishers; encourage them to publish works by Polish authors and translations of foreign-language poetry, of which there still isn’t enough on the Polish book market,” says Paulina Małochleb, secretary of the Wisława Szymborska Award. “Opposing haste, superficial participation in culture, and the domination of mass literature, we want to enhance the status or poetry as a kind of difficult, but important art. We reward authors who are able to retain independence, create their own world that is not prone to external circumstances, who operate words in a masterly fashion. Justyna Bargielska may be considered a poet of a private, intimate voice. Krystyna Dąbrowska focuses on the life of objects and through them, she talks about the secrets of existence. Łukasz Jarosz introduces nostalgic motifs, refers to the world of childhood experiences. Krzysztof Karasek records chaos – his own, internal chaos, but also that beyond-individual, external chaos. Jan Polkowski is a poet of struggle and resistance, the community spirit. The poetry volumes selected by the jury represent different poetic dictions, they form diverse worlds; what they do have in common is individualism and the power of poetic expression,” emphasises the Award’s secretary.

A day after the award ceremony, the Wisława Szymborska Foundation would like to invite everyone to the Arteteka of the Regional Public Library in Krakow (ul. Rajska 12) to a meeting with the winner. The event begins at 5 p.m.

PLEASE NOTE: journalists interested in participating in the Gala are requested to send in completed accreditation forms by e-mail to akredytacje@szymborska.org.pl by the 11th of November. Due to the television broadcast, we request that everyone arrives at the Malopolska Garden of Arts an hour before the Gala begins (at 7 p.m.). PLEASE NOTE: due to the television broadcast, taking photographs is not allowed during the Gala.

We would like to invite everyone to the screening of the latest films of Sławomir Paszkiet’s Wy-Tłumaczenia series – a portrait of Karol Lesman, this year’s winner of the Transatlantyk Award, and of Anders Bodegård, eminent translator and populariser of Polish literature in the Swedish language.

16th of November 2013, 4 p.m.
Jagiellonian University, the small lecture theatre on the ground floor of Auditorium Maximum, ul. Krupnicza 33

Admission is free.