BRAK – Bratislava Book Festival

In celebration of 40 years of partnership and cooperation between Krakow and Bratislava, Krakow will be a special guest at the BRAK – Bratislava Book Festival, taking place May 29 – June 1 in the capital of Slovakia. Nearly 40 entities will take part in the event, including numerous Central European publishing houses, bookstores, libraries, writers’ organizations, and cultural institutions, and among them several Krakowian institutions, such as the Polish Book Institute, Ha!art Corporation, International Cultural Centre, and the Krakow Festival Office. Krakow based author  Ziemowit Szczerek and Slovakian writer Maroš Krajňák will take part in a discussion on Eastern European reportage and travel writing. During the festival, a special screening of the literary film View of Krakow as well as a multimedia presentation on Krakow UNESCO City of Literature will take place.

More on www.brakfestival.sk.

On May 21 – 24,  the 2014 General Assembly of the International Cities Network (ICORN) will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The Assembly is attended by representative of Krakow Festival Office.

 
ICORN (International Cities of Refuge Network) is an organisation of cities and regions offering refuge to persecuted writers. The objective of the organisation is to provide safe living and working conditions for the people of the pen whose works have become the reason for their political persecution. There are over 40 cities in ICORN. Krakow has been a member of ICORN since 2011, and in this time has welcomed 3 guest writers: Maria Amelie – Russian-born writer who, having written a book describing the life of an undocumented immigrant, was deported from Norway; Kareem Amer – Egyptian blogger, sentenced to four years of imprisonment for criticising the government of Hosni Mubarak and Mostafa Zamaninja – Iranian writer, persecuted in his home country.

 
The 2014 General Assembly will tackle setting new priorities and a strategic plan for 2014-2018. Among tens of others, the Assembly will be attended by representatives from Norwich and Reykjavik, Krakow’s partners in the Cities of Literature network, as well as those from Amsterdam, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Lillehammer, Oslo, Paris, and Stockholm.

From 29th May 2014, in selected pubs and cafés in Krakow, free booklets with fragments of classical literature and illustrations will be available. The action aimed at promoting reading amongst secondary-school and university students will be inaugurated with an exceptional meeting with Dorota Segda, which will be held on 29th May, at 7.00 p.m. at De Revolutionibus (14 Bracka Street). The actress will read excerpts from America by Franz Kafka, which one can find in the bookstore-café during the action. The other booklets, i.e., Espérance by Hermann Broch, The Odessa Tales by Issac Babel, Sól Ziemi (The Salt of the Earth) by Józef Wittlin and The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez by Arthur Conan Doyle can be found in the nearby Nowa Provincja café (3-5 Bracka Street), as well as in Café Szafé (10 Felicjanek Street), in Cafe Fińka (47 Józefińska Street) and in Café Cheder (36 Józefa Street). A competition has also been prepared for the Move the Book! participants. The prize is a very rare book – the first, post-war edition of the collection of poems by Józef Czechowicz, dating back to 1949. It will be handed to the first person who after the end of the inauguration comes to the Krakow Info Point in the Wyspiański Pavilion, at 2 Wszystkich Świętych Square, with the complete set of booklets.

Idea behind the action:

Poles do not read. This must be changed. After all, reading is one of the most pleasant activities in life. Reading creates worlds and gives birth to images exceeding any other experience. Readers have their favourite books, often editions from many years ago. They are their most precious treasures. The contents is associated with a particular cover design, or with a remembered illustration. Once, illustrations constituted an inherent element of a book. A book was a complete entity, a uniform whole – it was a treasure trove of experience. It was fascinating – the interweaving of image and words, the emergence of vision on the verge of the invented and the perceived. Our booklets were born out of love of literature. They contain the name of the author, the title, an excerpt of prose and an illustration.

Initiators of the action:

Paulina Pikiewicz, Wojciech Grabowski.

MOVE THE BOOK! TAKE IT, WATCH IT, READ IT.

The Villa Decius Association invites persons of 50 and older to take part in a literary competition whose theme is “My Poland”. The admissible forms of the submitted works include a story, a fairy tale, a legend, a blog, a diary (fragments), a script, a feature article, an essay, an interview, a documentary or a review. The maximum length of the text amounts to 8000 graphic signs. The works should be submitted in an electronic form to ziemowit@villa.org.pl by 3rd June. The competition will be adjudicated and the prizes-handing ceremony will be held in June 2014.

Apart from the book awards, in the autumn, we are planning to issue a publication containing the awarded and selected works. The competition is held as part of the “SAGA – creativity workshops” project addressed to senior citizens interested in developing their writing skills.

“”SAGA – creativity workshops” is a comprehensive proposal aimed at education, integration and activation of elderly people. The practical skills introducing the participants into the world of the own literary work will be acquired during workshops, seminars, work with texts, literary games and homeworks in the workshop groups of one’s own choice, i.e., prose or media.

The creative writing course will be supplemented with open meetings of the Literary Salon offering lectures on literary theory and contemporary trends, as well as meetings with authors and discussions of the contemporary and old Polish literature. We will host authors, journalists, publishers and other specialists of the field.

The program is supplemented with the voluntary Saga Club. Its participants contribute by sharing their own knowledge, experience and abilities. More information and texts by the participants of the three former editions of the project may be found on the website: www.saga.villa.org.pl.

As part of the celebrations of the hundredth anniversary of the birthday of Octavio Paz – a great Mexican poet and essayist, and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990 – the Mexican Embassy in Poland and the Cervantes Institute in Krakow invite the audience to a meeting with representatives of Mexican literature in its three aspects: essays, prose and poetry. Hernández Jorge F. – an essayist, novelist and Paz’s friend, David Toscana – a novelist, and Gerardo Beltrán – a poet, translator and academic teacher, will present Octavio Paz’s oeuvre and will talk about the context of Mexican literature into which it is inscribed, and in which this figure is a permanent point of reference and of compulsory reminiscences. The meeting will be held on Thursday, 29th May, from 12:15 to 14.30, at the Cervantes Institute (12 Kanonicza Street). It will be held in Spanish with simultaneous translation to Polish. The admission is free.

On 22nd May, at 7.00 p.m., in the movie theatre at the Malopolska Garden of Arts in Krakow, Professor Dariusz Czaja will give a lecture belonging to the Anthropology and fictions series. It will focus on such issues as historical objectivism, the role of facts and imagination in the creation of the past and what it was really like. The starting point for the considerations will be a book by Jean d’Ormesson, The Glory of the Empire (La gloire de l’Empire).

The purpose of the project Philosophy and Literature. The Krakow Lectures consists in creating a space for philosophy and literatures lovers. On average, the lectures will be given every three months throughout the entire calendar year. They will be open to general public and admission will be free.

Detailed information on the website: www.wyklady-krakowskie.pl.

The Award Committee of the Wisława Szymborska Award 2014 selected 5 nominated books out of 171 volumes published in 2013 and submitted for the second edition of the international poetic competition: Wojciech Bonowicz for the volume Echo (Echo), Biuro Literackie; Jacek Dehnel for the volume Języki obce (Foreign languages), Biuro Literackie; Mariusz Grzebalski for the volume W innych okolicznościach (In Other Circumstances), EMG publishing company; Julia Hartwig for the volume Zapisane (Written Down), a5 publishing company) and Michał Sobol for the volume Pulsary (Pulsars), Nisza publishing company). The name of the winner will be known on 25th October during the Award Gala which will be held in the ICE Krakow Congress Centre.

In 2014, poets belonging to three generations were nominated by the Award Committee of the Wisława Szymborska Award. Along with the doyen of Polish poetry, Julia Hartwig, a peer of Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński and Tadeusz Gajcy, also Wojciech Bonowicz, Mariusz Grzebalski and Michał Sobol, who represent medium-aged generations were nominated. The youngest nominee, 34-year old Jacek Dehnel, is an experienced writer, with extensive output seemingly not corresponding to his age. In 2014, like in the first edition of the Award, the nominated books are very diversified and using different styles. Only the subject matter, i.e., everyday life in all its dimensions and colours, is actually shared by all the poets, as each of the nominees focuses on describing reality, the daily life and ordinary activities and experiences. At the same time, however, each of them does it in a different way, emphasises different values and notices other phenomena. Bonowicz opts for death and metaphysical anxieties; Dehnel drifts towards irony, simultaneously inducing a collision of distance and closeness; Hartwig moves within the sphere of nature and culture, while Grzebalski makes the past experience a starting point for his reflections. In this way each poet works the reality out and chooses different filters, images and tones.

Popularization of poetry, the less and less popular art, is the purpose of the Award. The Wisława Szymborska Foundation wants not only to attract the readers, but also publishers. It wished to encourage them to print the works of Polish authors and to publish foreign poetry in translation, as the latter is rather poorly present on the Polish book market.

The Wisława Szymborska Foundation is the organiser of the competition. The Wisława Szymborska Award has an international status and it is granted every year for a book of poetry published in Polish in the preceding year. Entered for the Award may be poetic volumes published originally in Polish or in translation to Polish. The books may be submitted by the authors themselves, as well as by publishing companies, cultural institutions, literary media and the Award Committee members.

More information about the award and nominees may be found on the website: www.szymborska.org.pl.

A poetry soirée of Charles Simić, the winner of the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award 2014, will be held on Thursday (15th May) at 6.00 pm at the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology Krakowie (26 Konopnickiej Street). The meeting will be moderated by Adam Zagajewski and Andrzej Franaszek. Ryszard Krynicki and Adam Zagajewski will read Polish translations of Simić’s poetry. The event will herald the Miłosz Festival 2015. Admission is free, don’t miss out!

Charles Simić ( born 1938, Belgrade) – American poet, translator, essayist, editor, academic teacher, author of nearly twenty poetry books. The winner of the Pulitzer Award, Griffin International Poetry Prize, Wallace Stevens Award and Robert Frost Medal. Nominated for the National Book Award, in the years 2007–2008, the official Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of US Congress. For over 30 years he lectured American literature and ran courses in creative writing at creative writing at the University of New Hampshire. He translated Tomaž Šalamun and Vasco Popa, for which he received the PEN Translation Prize. Co-editor of Paris Review. His texts are regularly published in The New York Review of Books.

The poetry soirée has been organised by: Wydawnictwo a5, Zbigniew Herbert Foundation, Krakow UNESCO City of Literature, City of Literature Foundation, Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology and Krakow Festival Office.

We are pleased to remind our Readers that last year Krakow received the prestigious title of the UNESCO City of Literature, thus joining the elite group of six cities which had earlier received this title ( Edinburgh, Melbourne, Iowa City, Dublin, Reykjavik and Norwich).

Dublin – UNESCO City of Literature celebrates the 75th anniversary of Finnegans Wake – Joyce’s legendary book of the dark. To commemorate this anniversary each of the seven UNESCO cities of literature made a unique present: film adaptation of a short excerpt from the novel. The Krakow episode is based on Krzysztof Bartnicki’s translation: Finneganów Tren, published in 2012, the effect of more than ten years of titanic work. The film had its premiere yesterday (14th May) in Dublin. The Krakow Festival Office is the film producer.

The author of the film concept and the film director is Michał Buszewicz, one of the most talented playwrights of the young generation. He invited cooperation of Magda Szpecht, Kuba Laskowski and Ludwik Kamiński to make a film based on an excerpt from the novel. The cast includes twin brothers Lesław and Wacław Janicki, famous actors of Tadeusz Kantor’s theatre (now running a jeweler’s workshop in Krakow), as well as Jaśmina Polak known from Hardkor Disco. The film was made at Wawel Cathedral, the Krakow Szkieletor (Skeletor), as well as at the Janicki brothers’ shop in Krakow. The Krakow episode refers to the famous legend about the 16th-century pirate queen, Grace O’Malley, whom Lord Howth refused entry to his castle at dinner.

The project was co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage under the programme Krakow City of Literature – a social and promotional campaign to use of the Literary Krakow brand in order to promote readership and Polish literature.

Michał Buszewicz (born 1986) is a playwright and scriptwriter, the author of Zbrodnia (Crime) staged at the Polski Theatre in Bielsko–Biała (award for the best spectacle at the 18th National Competition for Staging of a Polish Contemporary Play), Proces Berentyzacji (The Processs of Berentisation), which was staged under the 12th Drama Days at the Jerzy Szaniawski Theatre in Wałbrzych, Bohaterki (Heroines) staged in the same theatre in 2013, and Misja (wojny od których uciekłem) (Mission – Wars I Escaped) which reached the semi-final of the Gdynia Drama Award 2012. He was assistant to Paweł Miśkiewicz at the staging of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull.

James Joyce is one of the greatest 20th-century writers, Irish-born, writing in English. In protest against provinciality and bigotry of his native Dublin he left Ireland in 1904 to never come back again. He lived in Rome, Pula, Trieste, Zurich and Paris, where his greatest works abounding with autobiographical allusions were created. He died in Zurich during WWII. He is buried there with his wife. He authored two books which completely revolutionised novel writing. The first, Ulysses (1922), combines formal innovation with boldness in writing about sex. The second, Finnegans Wake, is Joyce’s last work which he began writing on 10th March 1923. Finnegans Wake is an innovative text, even today believed to be a book that is impossible to read. The language of the book is irregular, based on sound, sense and rhythm plays.

Krzysztof Bartnicki authored the novel Prospekt emisyjny (Prospectus) published under Liberatura series, author of dictionaries and holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage scholarship. He published some excerpts from Finnegans Wake in Literatura na Świecie and Przekładaniec. His translation of Finnegans Wake is one of the few complete translations of Joyce’s masterpiece (after its French, Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Korean translations). It was published by Corporation Ha!art which also released his book Fu wojny (The Fu of War).

The Krakow Festival Office sincerely thanks the translator Krzysztof Bartnicki for making his translation available for the project.