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On the UNESCO’s Poetry Day the Facebook fanpage Krakow City of Literature was launched. It will be the first-contact site with literary projects and events to be held under the City of Literature programme. Our readers may expect prize competitions and invitations to most interesting events.

Krakow has been recently honoured with the prestigious title of UNESCO City of Literature, but the city’s literary values date back to the earliest times in Poland’s history. You can follow the most important events on the timeline. The service will also offer photographs, information about new books and literary meetings, plebiscites, exhibitions and awards on the fanpage.

The users are the power of social networking services. We invite Facebook users to give “likes” to our fanpage and to contribute to Krakow City of Literature with their own content!

Have a drink Pilch likes, carry Szymborska’s shopping bag, follow the paths of writers – on Thursday (27th March) the All-Polish Festival Following Writers’ Paths: City as a Space for Creation starts in Krakow. On the programme you will find a tour of the city that includes roaming Krakow’s literary bars, meetings with writers, workshops and a city game. On top of that, a conference will be held at the Faculty of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian University, the project co-organiser. The Krakow Festival Office is the project partner.

Writers’ paths – retraced, marked, described, anecdotic, fetishized by culture theoreticians. But the paths are for walking along! The first edition of the festival will combine both approaches.

You will be offered a unique tour as part of the festival – following the trail of Krakow’s bars and restaurants with literary connotations. It will be an opportunity to meet colourful types from the circles of literary bar regulars and avid vodka drinkers. Bar owners, barflies or local writers will introduce you to the spirit of every spot on the way — Ambasada Śledzia, Piękny Pies, Cafe Szafé, Klub Kulturalny and other places.

Festival participants will take part in an open city game – they will have the chance to have a drink Pilch likes, to carry Szymborska’s shopping bag, to sing a Turnau song or to dress up as Ms Lola, the legendary cloakroom attendant at the Writers’ House in Krakow. There will also be workshops and meetings with writers associated with the former Writers’ House at 22 Krupnicza Street and film screenings. The Festival will come to an end on the 29th of March.

Three days of debates, 14 panel discussions, nearly fifty speakers from all over Poland – these are  only a handful of the impressive statistics of the conference, which is the most important event of the first edition of the festival. Before we set off on our way around literary Krakow as part of the Festival, we will have the opportunity to reflect on the issue of the creator and his/her work entangled in urban space (and the other way round): There will be theoretical content as well and very specific attempts at mapping individual writers from different regions of Poland. Each day will begin with a lecture given by an expert in the field. This includes, in order of appearance: The Dean of the Faculty of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian University Jarosław Fazan PhD, Professor Marta Wyka PhD, and Professor Franciszek Ziejka PhD. Admission is free!

See the Festival programme and accompanying conference at: www.sciezkamipisarzy.pl

– Visit the Polish mediaeval and renaissance town in the documentary film which reveals some of its secrets, with the poet Adam Zagajewski as narrator – writes Eduardo Lago, the EL PAIS journalist who visited Krakow at last year’s Conrad Festival.

The name of Krakow – an outstandingly literary city – is inextricably connected with two great poets whom the Polish language gave the world: Nobel Prize winners Czesław Miłosz and Wisława Szymborska. None of them was born in Krakow but the city embraced them like its children, as it did with other fine writers such as: Joseph Conrad, Tadeusz Kantor, Stanisław Lem, Sławomir Mrożek, Stanisław Witkiewicz and Adam Zagajewski. – comments the EL PAIS columnist.

– The creators of the film, which is nostalgic in tone, try to efface the gap between the contemporary city and its past. Mediaeval Krakow melts into the renaissance city, and both eras blend together in the heart of the modern town. Olden-day theatres, cafés and cabarets peep into modern ones for a while. Horse-drawn trams and cabs cross the paths of today’s taxis and bikes; the acrid smell of oil mixes with the sweetish smell of horse manure; ugliness which pops out here and there merges with serene beauty. Zagajewski recalls Szymborska, who when passing by Wawel Castle didn’t even notice it. A paradox of the queen of paradoxes. Is it so that poetry watches over the city’s dream or wakes it up? – adds Eduardo Lago.

To read Eduardo Lagos’ full article in EL PAIS, please visit website.

 

A special entryphone has been installed at the door of Nowa Prowincja Café (3-5 Bracka Street) – Poetry entryphone. When you push the button you will hear renowned poets reading their poems: Ewa Lipska, Adam Zagajewski, Ryszard Krynicki, Bronisław Maj and others. But this is not all. You will also have the opportunity to hear archive recordings of Wisława Szymborska and Czesław Miłosz. This opportunity is offered on the 10th anniversary of one of the city’s best-known literary cafés. So now, thanks to the title of UNESCO City of Literature granted to Krakow last October, literature will be everywhere , to be heard even on the entryphone.

It is a joint project of the Krakow Festival Office and Nowa Prowincja. Most recordings have been made available courtesy Wydawnictwo a5 publishers. Other project partners are Radio Krakow and the Wisława SzymborskA Foundation. The project draws inspiration from Anna Maraj’s installation under the Miłosz Year 2011. Under that project an entryphone was installed at6/5 a Bogusławskiego Street, the Czesław Miłosz’s last residence address, to symbolically open the door to the poet’s apartment.

Once again, we are glad to remind our readers that last year Krakow was awarded the prestigious title of the UNESCO City of Literature, thus joining the elite group of six cities which had been honoured earlier with this title (Edinburgh, Melbourne, Iowa City, Dublin, Reykjavik and Norwich).

 

 

 

 

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At the third meeting under the  Reading Series Darek Foks will read an excerpt from his more extensive prose work Recenzentka (Reviewer). Kaja Puto will present a slide show illustrating a piece of reportage from Georgia, whilst Erica Lehrer will have a slide-show concerning a book of essays on the exhibition of Jewish figures – Souvenir Talisman Toy. Malwina Antoniszczak will read some excerpts from Julian Antonisz’s diary. The Reading Series will be moderated by the journalist Aleksandra Małecka. The Krakow Festival Office is the project partner. On Friday 21 March, at 6.00 pm, you are all welcome at Cafe Szafe (10 Felicjanek Street).

Reading series is a form of presenting literature and at the same time bringing the writers’ community together. The Krakow Reading Series consists of regular meetings at which writers, essayists and translators read excerpts from their works. One can also familiarise oneself with works on which the authors are still working, the newest works by well-known authors and by newcomers selected by the project curators.

The initiative has been launched by journalists and activists associated with the publishing house,  foundation, magazine and portal Ha!art. The next meeting is due in April. This time the Reading Series has been prepared by the journalist Kaja Puto. Don‘t miss out!


Have a look at the photos from the special screening of A View of Krakow directed by Magdalena Piekorz, at the Auditorium Casa del Lector in Madrid. Before the screening, the poet Adam Zagajewski talked with the Spanish literary critic Mercedes Monmany about the perception of the poet’s works in Spain. The event, attended by Deputy Mayor of Krakow for Culture and City Promotion Magdalena Sroka and Robert Piaskowski, Deputy Director for Programme Planning at the Krakow Festival Office, was organised by the Polish Institute in Madrid.

Magda Piekorz’s film View of Krakow presents a literary image of the city. Last year, Krakow was honoured with the prestigious title of UNESCO City of Literature, thus joining the six cities – Edinburgh, Melbourne, Iowa City, Dublin, Reykjavik and Norwich – which already hold the title.

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The Krakow Festival Office is the co-producer of the Polish episode View of Krakow of the City(W)rites series. The production was supported by the Krakow Film Commission. Telewizja Polska SA (Polish TV) and the Book Institute are project partners. The film production was also financially supported by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from funding available under the Promotion of Reading programme operated by the Book Institute.

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The Polish episode in the series City(W)rites was created under the Reading Malopolska programme supported by funding from the Malopolska Regional Operational Programme 2007-2013. The programme encompasses a set of activities through which Malopolska and its capital city Krakow intend to communicate their literary heritage and to engage themselves in the building of a network of creative regions in the field of literature.

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A new virtual literary trail is being launched. This time we are taking you on a trail of the Malopolska Avant-Garde. From the new trail you can learn, among other things, about the ferment the followers of Tadeusz Peiper created in the Zwrotnica magazine and about the Formists whom Bruno Jasieński compared to a mediaeval guild. Highly recommended.

The new trail was conceived by Jacek Olczyk: a literary critic, translator and theoretician of literature. She was the holder of scholarships of the French Government (2006) and the Florentyna Kogutowska Fund (2006) in Paris. Co-creator of the Mrówkojad magazine, author of entries in Wielki leksykon pisarzy polskich (The Great Lexicon of Polish Writers), the initiator of Seria Potencjalna of the Lokator Publishing House. Translated Theatre 1 of Georges Perec.

Next week the Trail of Printing and Publishing Traditions, will premiere, followed by The Peiper Trail. Every trail leads through different places and touches upon different themes connected with literature. Follow us on the portal!

The project Literacka Małopolska is co-financed by the European Union as part of the The Malopolska Regional Operational Programme 2007-2013 ERDF.

The MocArty RMF Classic awards have been announced! The exhibition Szuflada Szymborskiej (Szymborska’s Drawer) at the National Museum in Krakow along with the first Wisława Szymborska Poetry Award Competition are the Event of the Year. – For the fresh idea of showing the drawers filled with Wisława Szymborska’s world, so difficult to pigeonhole, and for promoting the noble idea that that poetry can be quite a tangible value in our prosaic lives – we can read in the verdict’s justification.

RMF Classic listeners selected their favourites for the fourth time, and in four categories: Person of the Year, Event of the Year, Film Music of the Year and the Thing with Class.

The Woman with Class annual award of the MocArty Gala Media Patron, Twój STYL magazine, went to the actress – Kinga Preis. She can be seen in the newest Wojtek Smarzowski’s film Pod Mocnym Aniołem, (The Mighty Angel), of which the Krakow Festival Office is the co-producer.

See the full list of award-winners.

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