Central European School of Poetry / Program II (SK)
Omlatina — Dotyky 22
Večer s poéziou
20. 10. 2022 • Prešov • 17.30
Krajská knižnica P. O. Hviezdoslava (Hlavná 13)
Vystoupí: František Hruška, Dominik Bárt,
Peter Milčák a Ivona Pekárková a další.
Poezie zemí V4:
Richard Kramár, Patryk Kosenda, Eszter Kósa.
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Reading of Central European poets in a pub
Zofia Bałdyga
Poetry readings involving authors from different parts of the same region naturally invite questions of regional poetic identity. The list of performers at this Omlatina gathering makes me think along similar lines, though I know that if I say Central Europe now, I may well be accused by the authors of total anachronism. But anachronistic concepts are there to be updated.
It is quite enough that we talk to each other. And I don't even need (we don't need) poems in which something Central European is explicitly heard.
I often answer the question of what the poetry of our part of Europe is actually like. I answer it, but I still don't know. The only time when I seem to be getting closer to that answer is at meetings of poets and poets where I can remain silent.
Like when the surreal imagery of Vojta Vacka
meets the avant-garde imagination of Patryk Kosenda at the bar.
I cosmologize with my own reflection
Every fallen pine cone gives rise to a fully furnished house
I smell the logs with psychedelic precision
sighs the king
Maybe they will talk about the avant-garde traditions of both languages. Maybe about the surrealism that only one of them can boast. Maybe they'll write a manifesto together that will finally and once and for all (or at least until someone does it again) answer the question I posed at the beginning.
Then they will be joined by Richard L. Kramar with performative corporeality and Tim Postovit with stories from seemingly distant worlds and linguistically colorful testimonies to several contemporary crises at once. Poets who are not afraid to be fragile. And they can show grit and vulnerability at the same time in a single verse.
I znów jestem 'na scenie'
against all comers
In a neighboring country, they forbid people to tell children
about love
Take, little wolf, but you'll pay for it with your skin!
Women like postmodernism
have no sense of history
I stand and watch
I'm interested in everything around me
But not for too long.
It will be a poetry reading in the middle of a burning forest. And it will be there not only to read, but to listen.
_____
Imaginatywne jest polityczne
Roman Polách
Today I'm listening to the band Kurvy Češi on the statehood day, I'm looking out in the park at the trees that are stretching all their branches to this noise punk, gradually losing their leaves and they don't care that they grew here in Ostrava soil, just like I don't care that I was born in this country in this body. No, it's not a pompous aristocracy.
Because in this country, "imaginative" racists can imagine a living dragon in fantasy movies, while a black-skinned elf is unimaginable to them; "imaginative" conspirators can imagine a worldwide conspiracy backed by reptilians, while social solidarity and humility are unimaginable to them, and finally, to the "imaginative" bigoted Catholics, a Marvel superhero hangs on the wall, while the equality of people who simply and powerfully love each other is unimaginable to them.
No, this is not imaginativeness - it is the same philistinism that Søren Kierkegaard wrote so persistently about two hundred years ago. They are all middle men, to whom any extremes are alien - for they cannot imagine the heights of a spirit which, for example, in its unmediatedness, respects other religions, nor can they imagine the opposite position of the civilized heights of the spirit, where we take a back seat and help strangers, other people in need.
Imaginativeness not only opens up the aristocratic and today anachronistic sounding term "heights of the spirit", but it opens up man as such, it opens him up to the changeability of the world, to respect, to this unrepeatability, because each person is ultimately an unrepeatable individuality, each individual person is in fact fundamentally different. Please, here you have four poets who in their poems represent the infinite world in all its potentialities. Here you can see that there is no so-called ivory tower solipsism, because the imaginative is political!
_____
Richar Kramár
Kontra
vedľa seba
polož: slák
a
smyčec
achillea millefolium a myší chvost
Francúzi stavajú zľava
Taliani sprava
a katedrála má nakoniec uprostred fugu
je to tak meter a pol
(potiaľto sme to my)
posledné slová:
„mám vám čo povedať
ale nie teraz“
tak rezonuje ilosrdenstvo
cez seba
prelož:
zhodu slov
pre krásnu ženu
a biely chlieb
výmena na moste
musí prebehnúť s istotou
nájdi si svetlo
a zostaň tam
_____
Patryk Kosenda
Robinson Tripoe
Jdu pro dřevo a nějakou trpkou moudrost.
Kosmologuju se s vlastním odrazem.
Čichám klády s psychedelickou přesností.
Nežvýkej kůru, ze které chlemtáš.
Sám sobě přenechej produkt náhražkové many.
Dýchej, jestli chceš.
(přeložil Dominik Bárt)
_____
The project is supported by:
![visegrad_fund_logo_maly](http://static.viaaurea.eu/t/vetrnemlyny_cz/images/2872.jpg/o-w:650|h:650/s-4d46de847a18?_ts=1683195902)