New residents from Australia and New Zealand | Kraków UNESCO City of Literature

Since the beginning of September, Villa Decius hosts two new residents, which came to Krakow as part of the Krakow – UNESCO City of Literature Residency Programme. The artists from New Zealand and Australia will spend two months in the City of Kings.

Melbourne-born Nadia Bailey is a writer, journalist and critic, whose texts were published in The Australian, The Lifted Brow, Cordite and in The Age/SMH. She wrote three theoretical books on popular culture, as well as poetry and short forms. Her works have brought her a number of prizes and awards, including the Adrien Abott Poetry Prize and OutStanding Queer Short Story Award.

Liz Breslin is a prose and poetry writer, as well as playwright of Polish descent from Hawea Flat. She regularly writes columns and articles for Otago Daily. She also presents performances featuring fragments of the Love in the time of netball essay. Her book Alzheimer’s and a spoon was listed among the 100 best volumes of poetry of 2017.

During their two-month stay, the writers will work on their current projects, while discovering the culture and literary milieu of our city. The readers from Krakow will have a number of opportunities to meet them at festivals, meetings with authors and other literary events. On the 6th of June, Nadia Bailey will host a creative writing workshop.

The Krakow – UNESCO City of Literature residency programme is addressed to writers, poets and translators from the Cities of Literature belonging to the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. It is carried out by the Krakow Festival Office in cooperation with the Villa Decius Cultural Institute, and its objective is to open up opportunities for writers to present their work to the Central European readers, support greater diversity in the Polish and European literary community, as well as to enable local writers to meet their foreign counterparts.

The last two weeks of August will be marked by a creative residency of Claire Prentice – Edinburgh-based writer and journalist – at Villa Decius.

Prentice has been working as a journalist for two decades, collaborating with various media, including the BBC, NPR, The Times of London, The Guardian and The Washington Post. She wrote two reportage books, and she is currently working on her third book about a family who made a fortune on real estate in New York City and then disappeared into oblivion in a strange and mysterious way.

The residency is carried out within the framework of cooperation between two UNESCO Cities of Literature: Krakow and Edinburgh. Last year, Krakow-based writer Ahsan Ridha Hassan was granted a one-month residency in Edinburgh.

Kraków UNESCO City of Literature is delighted to announce an international residency opportunity for 2019 for a writer from Edinburgh!

The selected writer will be invited to spend two weeks in Kraków, to develop their own creative practice in the beautiful surroundings of a Polish Renaissance palace. They will be invited to present the work to local audiences, and help promote the literary links between our two cities. We are looking for a writer who would like to explore Kraków in their creative practice, who is comfortable meeting new groups of people and talking about their work and willing to commit two weeks to their work and this residency.

What we offer
Krakow will offer a two-week stay in the second part of August at the Villa Decius, official partner of the project with years of experience running international residencies, including the Visegrad Literary Residency Program and the ICORN Residency Program. We will also offer a stipend and cover transportation costs between Krakow and Edinburgh.

Required documents

Application Form
Fragment of a published text (in Polish or English) or a fragment of a translation (in Polish). No more than 2 pages in length.
CV

Criteria
This residency is limited to writers living in Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature.

The applicant should have at least one published book (fiction or non-fiction), screenplay or theatre script. Alternatively, applications are welcome from translators, who have translated at least one work into Polish.
If successful, applicants should be willing to participate in the literary life of Krakow, including events, meetings, promotional interviews and engagements, festivals, where applicable.
Work on your own literary project during the residency.
The successful applicant will be asked to write will be asked to write a text (work of fiction or non-fiction) that will feature the City of Krakow (min. 4 000 to max. 11 000 characters with spaces) in some fashion and will be used in a future, published collection for promotional purposes.

Application deadline: noon on Friday 12^th July
Successful candidate notified: Monday 15^th July
Residency: August

Good luck!

Partner of the residency:

Things, ideas, places and characters are just some of the topics that will be discussed by the guests of the 11th Conrad Festival! From 21st to 27th October, Krakow will host, among others, Almudena Grandes, author of some of the most recognisable and most frequently translated works of contemporary Spanish literature in the world, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian writer, author of the famous book Americanah and Dmitry Bykov, one of the most popular Russian writers today. The theme of this year’s festival is “Realities”.

“We can safely say that for a week once a year, Krakow becomes not only the literary capital of Poland, but also one of the most important cities on the literary map of the world. This was also noticed by the creators of the international Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe programme, who classified the Conrad Festival organised in Krakow as one of the 24 best European festivals. It’s a great honour!” says the Mayor of Krakow Jacek Majchrowski. “This is thanks to the guests of the event – writers who want to come here and talk about important topics and the audience who want to listen and ask questions. The Conrad Festival is an obligatory event in the Krakow autumn calendar”, says Mayor Majchrowski.

The festival week, which will run from the 21st to the 27th of October, will be full of meetings with authors, debates and reading lessons. All under the slogan “Realities”. “This year, we decided to reach the very centre of our fascination with literature. Until now, we have tried to show how to talk about reality. Now, thanks to our authors and readers, we will try to say what literature is asa reality, or more precisely: how reality comes to be thanks to literature. Even more precisely: how literature praises various realities”, explains Michał Paweł Markowski, the festival’s artistic director.

Each festival day will have a different theme: things, words, images, ideas, relations, places and characters. “These concepts refer to what we think are the most important elements of reality. We also think of them as strands that intertwine and at the same time connect different worlds. For example, we understand things as the material basis for existence, but also as the essence of our emotional experience and, finally, as the products of the language we speak and tell stories with. Places are for us certain points in reality, as well as literary topoi”, adds Grzegorz Jankowicz, the festival’s programme director.

During this year’s festival we will show how literature, thanks to the means at its disposal, creates different realities that talk to each other, argue or fight. And there will be plenty of opportunities to do that. The main programme of the event consists of several dozen meetings with authors, debates and reading lessons. On the first day, we will meet with Almudena Grandes, the author of some of the most famous and most frequently translated works of contemporary Spanish literature in the world. During the panel “In the Eye of the Cyclone” we will hear – as Grzegorz Jankowicz explains in his comments on particular events – about Grandes’ protagonists who live in times of crisis. On the surface, nothing threatens them. They believe that they will avoid clashing with the great history, hide from its destructive waltz in one of the secluded homes in the suburbs. The calm in the eye of the cyclone is easy to mistake for security, but it is enough for the tornado of history to change direction and everything will be destroyed. The next day, we invite you for an afternoon with Zyta Rudzka, who likes to tell stories about people – she invents stories in such a way that they always revolve around people, not places or things. But that is not the end of interesting events. The Festival Tuesday also includes an obligatory meeting with Mona Cholletand Dmitry Bykov. Kazimiera Szczuka will lead the conversation with Chollet about violence, to which one can get used to even in extreme forms. Together they will look for answers to questions about how to fight it, what measures should be taken against it, what words should be used so that it never becomes commonplace. Małgorzata Nocuń will meet with Bykow to talk about the language which no authority can do without. Although Dmitry Bykov is not a politician, thanks to his civic attitude and accurate satirical comments on the current reality, he became the voice of the Russian opposition.

The following days will bring more big literary names, like Charlotte Gordon. Her latest book Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2016. The heroic and uncompromising struggle of the two protagonists was aimed at empowering women and winning over their rights to everyone. Is their legacy still inspiring for contemporary emancipation movements?

A meeting with Jáchym Topol will be an important part of the programme. In his novels, Topol creates alternative worlds that seemingly have nothing to do with our own. However, we only need to take a careful look at the characters, their motivations and exaggerated gestures to discover the subcutaneous similarity of both spheres: the real one, to which we are accustomed, and the fictional one, which offers us a cognitive rehab. Didier Eribon, French sociologist and philosopher and author of the biography of Michel Foucault, will tell the story of the escape that many of us have experienced.

One of the closing events of the festival will be a meeting with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her novel Purple Hibiscus (2003) was nominated for the Orange Prize and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Debut. On Saturday night, we will look for answers to questions like: How much can a writer do? Is literature a way of writing with which you can say anything? And if not, who should draw the line? Who would be able to speak on this matter?

The Conrad Festival will also be visited by eminent Polish authors. Among them are Mariusz Szczygieł, author of reportages on the experience of absence, Jacek Dukaj, creator of fantasy prose, Anna Cieplak, winner of the Conrad Award in 2017 for literary debut Ma być czysto, Leszek Libera, author of Utopka, a story about patriotism, human defects and the lust for power, and Monika Sznajderma, an award-winning writer who has run Wydawnictwo Czarne publishing house since 1996.

On the last day of the Festival, the winner of the Conrad Award – the most important award in Poland for debut writers in the prose category, which is part of the city’s programme to support the debuts of the City of Literature UNESCO, a joint venture of the City of Krakow, the Krakow Festival Office, the Book Institute and the Tygodnik Powszechny Foundation, will be announced.

The Conrad Festival also includes accompanying events, such as a film programme, workshops for children and industry meetings. A detailed programme will be announced soon. At the same time, it is worth recalling that the Krakow Book Fair – considered to be one of the most important events of the book industry in Poland – is held parallel to the festival.

A meeting of all UNESCO Creative Cities of Literature is slated to take place from the 20th to the 25th of May, and during this event, the most important plans and challenges for the next year will be discussed. As many as 46 delegates from 28 cities will participate in workshops and discussions to establish wider international cooperation. This meeting is also an opportunity for each of the cities to present their best practices – in the case of Krakow, it is about Planet Lem and the bookstore support programme. Elżbieta Foltyniak, who represents Krakow – UNESCO City of Literature, will also host a session on international residency programs.

The meeting will be held in two British cities: Norwich and Nottingham, who are joining forces for a couple days to become the literary heart of the world, dubbed “Nottwich.” In previous years such meetings were also held in Barcelona and Iowa City.

UNESCO Cities of Literature work together to create a worldwide partnership and literary links between cities and countries. Each city also carries out their own local programmes, engaging their residents in the dynamic literary life.

More about the Cities of Literature: krakowcityofliterature.com/networks/unesco-cities-of-literature/

This year Kraków will host four exceptional writers. Today we have welcomed Georgina Wilding from Nottingham, Creative Director of Nottingham Poetry Festival, the Founding Editor of Mud Press and Nottingham’s first young poet laureate. She has performed her poetry both nationally and internationally, and writes to commission for organisations such as BBC Radio Nottingham and the Royal Shakespeare Society. She has been published in journals such as “The Rialto”, and teaches poetry and performance across the midlands. Wilding will spend in Kraków two months during which you will have many opportunities to meet her at the events organized by Kraków UNESCO City of Literature. For some it might be a second meeting with her poetry – last year she was a guest of the OFF stream of the Miłosz Festival.

Find more about Georgina Wilding: https://www.georginawildingpoet.co.uk/

The Krakow UNESCO City of Literature Residency Program is dedicated to writers from the Cities of Literature of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. It aims to provide writers with a platform to showcase their work and talent to a Central European audience, support greater diversity of voices and literatures on the Polish and Central European book market and offer local writers the chance to create links with international writers as well.

Between the 6th and 9th of June, the Miłosz Festival will host exceptional poets from Poland and abroad. This year’s festival centre, the Helena Modrzejewska National Old Theatre, festival bookshops, cafés and clubs, where poetry will be the most important on these days – the poetic polyphony of our guests will be present in all those places. Today, we present their profiles and remind you that the largest poetry festival in this part of Europe is just around the corner!

This year’s Miłosz Festival, taking place under slogan “The Seizure of Power “, is a living forum of dialogue taking place in many languages and at the intersection of many cultures. Who will provide this dialogue with high-octane, lyrical fuel? One of the most important contemporary English poets and the winner of probably all-important poetry awards in the UK has confirmed his presence at the festival. Simon Armitage is a professor at Oxford University and commander of the Order of the British Empire: he knows all about the collapse of this empire and the hated word “Brexit”. His poetry, disturbing, dynamic and drawing on prose forms, continues to influence Polish poetry. Denise Riley, a poet and political theory scholar, lecturer at English universities and an expert on the history of feminism, will also come to Krakow from the British Isles. The author of the renowned War in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and Mother and Marxism for Infants is an intriguing poet who combines lyricism with a cool theoretical impulse in her poems.

The invited artists will share with us their experiences gained in places where censorship deprives people of their freedom, the fate of citizens is often determined by violence and where armed conflicts were or are taking place. Ferida Duraković, a native of Bosnia and Herzegovina, called her most famous volume of poems Heart of Darkness. The siege of Sarajevo and the images of war emerge in her poems and essays. One of the most prominent figures in contemporary Russian poetry, Elena Fanailova, winner of the prestigious Andrei Bely Prize, manifests an intellectual “resistance movement” against symbolic violence and the policy of aggression in her contentious poetry which exposes the mechanisms of social life. Saleh Diab, born in Aleppo, a city-symbol and a testing ground for international war interests, has lived in France for many years, tirelessly promoting and translating Syrian poetry. In his work, he combines the experience of suffering and hope. Athena Farrokhzad, one of the most important and youngest voices of contemporary Swedish poetry, born in Tehran, will introduce herself to the Krakow audience. Her debut volume, White Blight, has been translated into twelve languages, including Polish, and has been staged several times at the theatre. Her poetry is a polyphony of voices full of anger and grief, practically begging to be shouted from the stage. The festival will not lack bold, radical gestures. Cypriot-Australian poet and actress Koraly Dimitriadis, author of the volume Love and Fuck Poems, currently a scholarship holder of the UNESCO City of Literature residency programme in Krakow, uncompromisingly opposes cultural and religious repression in her work. Poetry is the basis for her theatrical performance and a series of short films in which she herself appeared. Speaking of unruly artists, it is worth mentioning the musical duo Landschaft. Grygorii Semenchuk from Lviv and Ulrike Almut Sandig from Berlin combine their German and Ukrainian poems with hip-hop, electropunk and pop. In the vapours of dense, claustrophobic sounds, they express a generational rebellion, a rejection of the growing importance of right-wing movements and the migration crisis in Europe.

The Miłosz Festival is also a presentation of the works of authors whose voices delight and surprise, arousing the curiosity of readers of contemporary Polish poetry. The festival will be an opportunity to meet Krystyna Dąbrowska. The latest volume of the winner of the first edition of the Wisława Szymborska Award, Ścieżki dźwiękowe, brings to perfection the sparse poetics of observing the world, in which minor movements and situations instantly recall the general meanings and the always debatable, existential diagnoses of our “here and now”. Maciej Melecki, a fierce avant-garde artist and author of the “radical sadness” living in each of his poems, also refers to the world around us. His work is an expression of his refusal to accept the existing world of social, political and metaphysical illusions. Magdalena Kicińska is undoubtedly one of the most promising voices of young poetry. Her bravura poetic debut, Środki transportu immediately puts the author in an uncomfortable role – her second book will have to confirm her literary talent, with which she delighted in Pani Stefa. Presenting his performance at the festival will be Jakub Kornhauser, poet, translator, literary critic and literary scholar, another winner of the Wisława Szymborska Award among this year’s festival guests. In each of these fields, he is immersed in the heritage of the avant-garde, with particular emphasis on surrealism and concrete poetry (a genre combining elements of poetry and visual arts) of the Romance and Central European countries.

In the fire of literary polemics, in a café setting with a glass of wine or in the hum of the mixed voices of a crowd in a club – we invite you to actively commune with the most current poetry and its outstanding representatives. An opportunity like this only comes along once a year!

In conclusion: the rich programme of the Miłosz Festival includes, among others, meetings with authors, panel debates, poetry translation workshops, as well as the OFF band, presenting experimental and performative poetry. To find out more about the guests of this year’s edition, visit the website www.miloszfestival.pl and the festival fanpage on Facebook. See you there!

The Miłosz Festival is organised by the City of Krakow, Krakow Festival Office and the City of Literature Foundation.

The Miłosz Festival, the 8th edition of which will explore The Seizure of Power will once again make some room in the city space for experimental poetry. Stage, microphone, movement and voice, and above all, a sense of disagreement with the existing reality — all of these features will characterise this year’s OFF Stream at the Miłosz Festival.

On the 6th–9th of June, poets from all over the world will come to Krakow once again, and they can surely expect that their uncompromising forms of poetic expression will enjoy a warm and cordial welcome. Join us for a meeting with experimental, performative and noisy poetry, poems that sound the best with electronic music, bass guitar and applause of the audience. “If I can’t dance to it, it’s not my revolution!” — these words, inspired by works by Emma Goldman, perfectly reflect the formula of this year’s OFF Stream at Miłosz Festival. 150 years after the birth of the famous writer, feminist and activist, we are going to start the revolution on the Vistula with dance and your applause. And it’s going to be loud!

Seizure of power requires crossing boundaries. The guests of this year’s OFF Stream are far from following the well-trodden paths in their ways of artistic expression. Athena Farrokhzad, an Iranian poet, critic and translator, will cross the boundaries of poetic form. It will be no different in the case of Tatev Chakhian — an Armenian poet who combines poetry with visual art — and Jurij Zawadski, a poet and performer from Ternopil. Landschaft — two young experimental poets, Grigory Semenchuk (Lviv) and Ulrike Almut Sandig (Berlin) — will combine their own poems with hip-hop, electropunk and pop music. Koraly Dimitriadis, a Cypriot-Australian poet and actress, author of Love and F—k Poems — a best-selling volume of poetry in Australia, as well as Jakub Kornhauser — poet, essayist, winner of the Wisława Szymborska Award. Can you hear us now? SIKSA will make sure that there’s just enough decibels and lyrical rumble. “Rebellion without having to organise tenders & clickbait controversy” — that’s what the most punk poet in Poland has to say about herself. Sorry, that’s what punk is all about now.

The works of all invited poets — regardless of differences in literary expression — refer to or are marked by revolution, war and, above all, violence, including symbolic one. Their experimental artistic gesture is an attempt to respond peacefully to violence. Is it a gesture of a seizure of power? Or rather a sign of giving it up in favour of an attempt to establish a new order? OFF will present what has so far been unknown, but there will be no shortage of regular staples characteristic for this festival stream. Kolanko No. 6 will host a poetic slam, in which poets will fight for power over the audience using the only weapons allowed in this battle — their words and a microphone. They will be accompanied by an international performance of the Drop the Mic project (Iceland, Estonia, Norway).

OFF is all about its audience, and it has been a long-standing tradition of this stream that the festival audience takes on the role of its creators. The youth stage of the OFF Stream will showcase students of a Krakow-based high school, who will conclude the Engage! Young Producers project. The editors of the KONTENTquarterly, the aim of which is to establish an independent platform for the exchange of ideas between young authors, will also get an opportunity to speak their minds, since the Festival will also coincide with the première of a new issue of the magazine.

Young, experimental poetry from all over the world will become a battleground in a struggle for social change and your recognition — from the 6th to the 9th of June in Krakow during the Miłosz Festival. Admission to all festival events is free of charge.

The Miłosz Festival is organised by the City of Krakow, Krakow Festival Office and the City of Literature Foundation.

This year Kraków will host four exceptional writers. The artists from Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand will come to Kraków for monthly or two-month residences!

In May Kraków will welcome Georgina Wilding from Nottigham, Creative Director of Nottingham Poetry Festival, as well as being the Founding Editor of Mud Press, and Nottingham’s first young poet laureate. She has performed her poetry both nationally and internationally, and writes to commission for organisations such as BBC Radio Nottingham and the Royal Shakespeare Society. She has been published in journals such as “The Rialto”, and teaches poetry and performance across the midlands. Georgina will stay in Kraków until the end of June.

Koraly Dimitriadis form Melbourne will join us in June. Koraly is a Cypriot-Australian writer, actor, and the author of the poetry books Just Give Me The Pills and Love and F—k Poems. The latter is a bestseller for the poetry genre in Australia, and has had rights sold into Europe. Her two books form the basis of her poetic play “I say the wrong things all the time” which premiered in Melbourne’s renowned La Mama Theatre. Koraly is currently developing her debut novel, Divided Island, a love story set in Melbourne and Cyprus that explores how our upbringing effects who we love and how we love. She writes opinion for the Australian media and has been published in The Independent(UK) and The Washington Post internationally. Much of Koraly’s work is to do with cultural and religious repression. She is also working on a non-fiction book called Not Till You’re Married

In autumn, we will welcome two more residents. Liz Breslin and Nadia Bailey will spend two months (September and October) in our city of literature.

Representing Dunedin Liz Breslin writes plays, poems, stories and a fortnightly column, Thinking Allowed, for the “Otago Daily Times”. Her poetry collection, Alzheimer’s and a spoon (Otago University Press), was listed as one of The NZ Listener’s Top 100 Books of 2017. At home on the page and on the stage, Liz’s recent performances include ‘Love in a time of netball’ at the sold-out Wanaka season of Tall Tales and True, and the back end of Jill the Cow for her 2018 pantomime, Jac and the Beansprouts.

Nadia Bailey is an author, journalist and critic. She has published three non-fiction books on popular culture with Smith Street Books, and her short fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction has been widely represented in journals and independent presses. She was awarded highly commended in the 2017 OutStanding Queer Short Story Award, first place in the 2014 Adrien Abbott Poetry Prize among others. Her work has appeared in “The Lifted Brow”, “Cordite”, “The Australian and The Age/SMH”. She holds a Masters Degree in Creative Writing. She lives in Melbourne, Australia.

The residents will stay in the guest rooms of Villa Decius, project co-organizer. During their stays, you will have a chance to get to know them better at festivals, author’s meetings and other literary events.

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