Announcing the programme of the 14th Miłosz Festival

The slogan of this year’s Miłosz Festival is the title of one of the Nobel Prize winner’s most poignant late poems – TO’, says Szymon Kloska, curator of the event. The poem is the old poet’s confession of helplessness in the face of an encounter with inevitable evil. This evil appears to be an inalienable part of our experience. The question intrinsic to the poem is whether the awareness of the presence of what the poet does not dare name is in fact a source of power or hope.

Festival opening: Romana Bobrowska Studio S-5 and Villa Decius

As a prelude to the festival, we will meet on 28 June at the Krakow branch of the Association of Polish Writers for the Second Night of the mega Zine – a poetry competition and real-time editing of a one-day-only book and almanac of the poetry festival in the Royal City. Romana Bobrowska Studio S-5 will host the Polish Poets concert by Adam Ziemianin, broadcast by Radio Krakow. Sunday’s events (29 June) will take place at Villa Decius. The programme of the day features meetings with poets – Dagmara Kraus from Germany and Krzysztof Lisowski, as well as a discussion around Czesław Miłosz’s volume TOand the traces of the Nobel Prize winner’s works in recent poetry. The day will conclude with a debate with the nominees for the Wisława Szymborska Award: Urszula Honek, Stanisław Kalina Jaglarz, Ola Lewandowska, Antonina Tosiek and Joanna Żabnicka.

International guests

Versopolis, a network of nearly 40 European literary festivals which supports young poets and promotes their work beyond the borders of their home countries, will leave a mark on this year’s poetry festival in Krakow. As part of our collaboration, we will host renowned spoken word performer Joelle Taylor, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize and Polari Book Prize, and Montenegrin poet Vladimir Đurišić. The festival audiences will also encounter Harry Josephine Giles, whose volume Tonguit was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection, and Penny Boxall, a scholarship holder of the Kraków UNESCO City of Literature International Residency Programme. The poet has been working on her performance Replaying the Tape during her stay in Kraków, and Polish viewers will see its premiere at the Miłosz Festival.

We will also be joined by Ukrainian LitAkcent Award-winning poet Myroslav Laiuk, who will talk about his book Bakhmut with reports from the frontline in Ukraine, Wayne Miller

(United States), winner of numerous awards and scholarships, and translator Viktor Melnyk, author of the first translation of Juliusz Słowacki’s drama Kordian into Ukrainian. Latvian poet and visual artist Yelena Glazova will talk about her reissued volume Weź swą gębę w garść, lesie and invite readers to an audiovisual show.

Polish poetry is doing well

Every year, the festival features key Polish poets, whose works continue to garner attention. This time, we will invite Małgorzata Lebda, winner of the most important and prestigious awards, including the Gdynia Literary Prize, the Wisława Szymborska Award and the ORPHEUS Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński Poetry Award for for the best volume of the year. Our readers will also get an opportunity to meet Darek Foks, writer, filmmaker and visual artist, Kasper Pfeifer, poet and scholarship holder of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education for outstanding young scientists, and Krzysztof Czyżewski, writer, director and animator of intercultural activities, co-founder of the Borderland Foundation, who will also present a traditional master class during the festival.

This year brings a number of long-awaited releases, some of which will be available for the first time at the Miłosz Festival. The attendees will meet Jakub Gutkowski, winner of the KMLU Award for the livestream volume, as well as Krzysztof Pietrala, who will talk about his Ao Manao.

Of course, we could not skip the much-loved Republica Poetica, where festival guests read poems in several different languages, as well as the traditional talks on poetry, including the works of Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska and Krystyna Miłobędzka.

The Many Facets of Poetry – for children, music aficionados and theatre lovers

The organisers of the Miłosz Festival made sure to prepare a variety of events, including poetry workshops for children and youth, the Drama in Three Poetic Acts performance, concerts and audiovisual shows. Festival participants will also talk about the Emultipoetry project, which brought Poems on Walls,, they will listen to poets battling it out during Open Mic-style meetings, and will visit Radio Krakow at the anniversary celebration with Elżbieta Zechenter-Spławińska. But that is not all – the final treat, a concert of poetry by Ryszard Krynicki, comes at the end.

Awards and winners

As always, the Wisława Szymborska Award will be presented during the festival. Readers will meet the nominees, and on the day after the award gala they will come for a special meeting with the winner. We will also talk to the nominees for the Gdynia Literary Award in the Poetry category.

Admission to all events is free of charge with a complimentary pass available two weeks before the festival at and via the KBF: PLUS app. The event programme is available at . The festival centre will be located at the Potocki Palace. Make sure to check out the festival’s social media pages [LINK].

The Miłosz Festival is organised by: City of Kraków, Krakow Festival Office, operator of the Krakow UNESCO City of Literature programme, and the Association of Polish Writers

Partners: British Council, Versopolis, Wisława Szymborska Foundation, Wisława Szymborska Award, Villa Decius Institute for Culture

The event is co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Promoting Readership 2025 programme.

The public task is funded by the City of Kraków.

The KBF is a municipal cultural institution that has been active for nearly thirty years, developing creative industries, cultural tourism, the MICE industry and leisure sectors. It focuses on literature, film, music, visual arts, tourism, local initiatives and education. It organises and promotes large-scale cultural events with local, national and international scope, including the Misteria Paschalia Festival, Kraków Film Music Festival, Conrad Festival, Wianki – Celebration of Music and a number of other world-famous festival brands. The KBF is also one of the hosts of the Potocki Palace, publisher of a number of magazines and operator of the Krakow Culture, Krakow — UNESCO City of Literature and Krakow Film Commission programmes.