During this year’s Miłosz Festival, we will be talking about what cannot be expressed in words, but at the same time stimulates successive generations of poets trying to capture the lining of the world. This year’s edition of the Miłosz Festival takes place under the motto This [To], taken from the Nobel Prize winner’s opening poem in the 2000 volume under the same title. We will deal with its interpretation during a discussion to be hosted by Joanna Zach at Villa Decius (29th June). The masterclass in the Potocki Palace (festival centre) will be delivered by Krzysztof Czyżewski, a co-founder of the Borderland of Arts, Cultures and Nations Centre in Sejny and the Pogranicze [Borderland] Foundation, and the author of the memoir book Miłosz. Connective Tissue and others (4th June). During the festival, we will meet poets from around the world, including Penny Boxall and Harry Josephine Giles (Scotland), Jelena Glazova (Latvia), Ishion Hutchinson (Jamaica), Myroslav Lajuk and Viktor Melnyk (Ukraine) and Wayne Miller (USA). For the first time, Joelle Taylor (Great Britain) will present her poems to a Polish audience thanks to publication issued on the initiative of the Versopolis network of international poetry festivals, which will be distributed during the Krakow poetry festival (meetings with the author in the Spółdzielnia Ogniwo bookshop on 5th July). We will talk to poets from Poland: Małgorzata Lebda, Darek Foks, Krzysztof Pietrala, Kasper Pfeifer, Michał Mytnik, Przemysław Suchanecki or Agnieszka Smugła. We will learn more about the nominees for the Wisława Szymborska Award (Urszula Honek, Stanisław Kalina Jaglarz, Ola Lewandowska, Antonina Tosiek and Joanna Żabnicka) during a meeting in the Villa Decius (29th June), and the winner will be announced at the gala in the Bagatela Theatre (30th June). In the seat of the Krakow branch of the Polish Writers’ Association, we will together read poems by poets associated with this organisation. Republica Poetica will return – the festival guests will read poems by the event’s patron and excerpts from their own work (2nd July). We will observe the process of creating a festival zine – from the poem writing phase, to the spreads preparation and printing phase (28th June; as a prelude to the festival). There will also be events combining poetry and music, including a concert based on Ryszard Krynicki’s poems in the Potocki Palace (6th July).
Karnet 6/2025
