Czech poetry oozes vitality
The Poetry Festival (Den poezie) takes place each November coinciding with the birth of the eminent Czech poet Karel Hynek Mácha (*16.11.1810). With more than 40 locations, a programme encompassing readings, exhibitions, music and theatre performances, the Poetry Day has become a leading literary event in the Czech Republic.
Can you tell us about the beginnings of the Poetry Day?
I used to be a part of Klub 8 which was set up by Renáta Bulvová and me in the mid-late nineties. We put on a lot of readings in clubs and pubs around Prague and we also set up the Poetry on the Underground project. On the day it was launched we decided we’d organize a Poetry Day and chose the birthday of Karel Hynek Mácha (16 November) as the date as he is such a significant personality in Czech literature. That was in 1999. The very first Poetry Day lasted one day and included readings on the metro, a poetry tram full of children reading poetry, etc. After a few years the organisation of the Poetry Day was taken over by me and Martin Zborník and we did it together for a while. Over time another two people became involved in the organisation and we established Společnost poezie to coordinate events because after the first year it grew organically and became very large. We all do it as a hobby in our spare time so it is quite hard to do it on top of our jobs as these days it’s quite a big event which takes place in about forty towns and lasts for at least two weeks. We still call it Poetry Day but in fact it’s a poetry fortnight.
How do you coordinate all the events?
We coordinate all of the activities mainly in terms of publicising events. Most of them are organized by individuals or groups, and increasingly libraries and schools have become involved. Over the years we’ve built up contacts with poets, literary groups and institutions in different parts of the country, with libraries and schools etc. We write to all of them and announce the time-frame, the theme and ask them to send us their ideas about what they’re planning to do and from this information we produce materials which we send them a few weeks ahead of the event. As well as publicising all the national events we organise a programme of readings ourselves, mainly in Prague, as well as oversee the international aspect, as after the first few years it started to become more multicultural. It doesn't concern only poetry by the way – we also have prose writers, music often plays a big part, and we have dramatic events and other happenings. We don’t draw a boundary and the festival is open to all people who want to celebrate poetry in whatever way. It could be that just for one day in a school an element of poetry will be brought into the classes. Or there's a lovely library in Blansko which every year makes little scrolls of poetry and hides them between the books in the library so people just come across poetry when they are not expecting it.
What was the main impetus behind starting the festival?
I’ve always been interested in supporting readings of and interest in poetry and knew a little about other countries' national poetry events and thought that it was important to have an event that draws particular notice to poetry and tries to support it here, too. Poetry for me is the most important art form and I’m also very motivated by the large number of people from different parts of the country and backgrounds coming together as a community around a central interest. It isn’t only a festival of well-known poets, it’s also a grass-roots organisation, so for example in a library they might have a week of events for children and also readings by established Czech poets and poets from other countries.
Is the festival theme-based?
Yes, but the theme is usually very open and abstract and it isn't essential at all for participants to follow it. It might inspire some of the projects in schools, or some poets might respond to the idea, but it is only a suggestion. One year we had a theme „Poetry in Places“ with poets and other writers reading in unusual places, for instance at the Technical Museum Emil Hakl and others read and Igor Malijevský read his poetry on a boat on the Vltava. The theme this year was Nekonečný kraj (Endless Landscape) chosen in acknowledgement of it being Mácha’s Year and the festival ended with an actual pilgrimage to Litoměřice where poets and others walked about 16 km, reading along the way, ending up with an event in the town with local poets and musicians. I was sadly too tired by then to be a proper pilgrim so cheated and took the train, but two of my younger and fitter colleagues did the walk.
How would you evaluate those twelve years of festival?
I never rate an event by the number of people in the audience. Sometimes the greatest events have had relatively small audiences in fact, though of course I'm always very pleased when a huge number of people turn up! And we aren't motivated by wanting the festival to be big just for the sake of it - it has just grown in a sort of natural network over the years. So it's not so much a matter of size but of quality of experience. I personally value the involvement of a wide variety of Czech poets - this year for example we had Petr Borkovec, Ivan Jirous, Petr Hruška, Marie Šťastná and many others - and also the chance to involve poets from other countries.
In terms of the events for younger people I think what's important is the amount of involvement that they enjoy, the extent that they've been able to be creative and I think in terms of the festival activities for young people, the vast majority of them do seem creative. They try to get children excited by poetry, or at least not frightened of it. I think a lot of people are nervous about poetry because they think it's a closed area. I do think poetry is difficult, but it isn't a difficulty that should be exclusive or repellent and I think that to have a positive experience of reading and listening to poetry when you´re young can really open up your mind to the possibilities of the word and the beauty and power of language.
Do you have any memories that stand out in particular from having organised the festival?
I suppose some of the more unusual events that we’ve organised for children do stand out as they can be quite hectic. One year we had a poetry trail through Prague, which I think was a little too ambitious because we ended up having to race about through the city to a lot of events. It started off at the Planetarium on Petřín where there was a presentation inspired by the star which was named after Božena Němcová. Then we went down through Malá Strana and spoke about Neruda, for example, and it all eventually ended up at the Gallery of the Stone Bell with a puppet show based on Erben's Zlatý kolovrat.
This last year, for the theme Nekonečný kraj, we started off the day with an event which quite a few schools and libraries participated in all over the country at little brooks and rivers. The idea was to 'send your poetry to the sea'. The kids wrote their poems and made paper boats out of them and sent them off to the sea. I was going to an event in Prague and had all the paper and pencils ready but then realised the night before that I'd forgotten how to make paper boats so I was up until nearly two o'clock in the morning watching videos on YouTube about how to make them. These more unusual happenings tend to get imprinted on your mind. But above all, for me the most fantastic thing is the opportunity to hear great poets read. A particular highlight for me this year was the reading by Věra Jirousová († 2011) and Zbyněk Hejda reading at the Czech Centre.
What kind of audiences do you have?
It varies very much according to the poets. This is something I always hope will change a little over the years, as people tend to go to a reading because they are interested in a specific poet and audiences tend to be a little too tribal I think. And it is also often hard work to interest local audiences in the international poets, which I think is a great shame. The audiences are of all ages and from all backgrounds really. This year the grammar school poetry event took place at the Czech Centre one afternoon and later in the evening there was the reading by Hejda and Jirousová and quite a lot of the students actually came back later to listen to the poets, and I was glad for that connection. It's the sort of encounter I hope the festival can offer because of its variety.
Do you also organize other events throughout the year?
The organisation of this event is quite time consuming. To be honest it almost takes us the whole year to plan and coordinate it. But I do organise some events for women authors and my three colleagues in Společnost poezie (all of whom write poetry themselves) all individually organise things too. Martin Zborník organises readings with Totem, Zora Šimůnková does the Literární Vysočina festival and regular readings in Prague and Josef Straka is responsible for the literary events at the newly-opened Dům čtení in Prague 10. Since he’s been part of Společnost poezie he’s organised all of the poetry readings in libraries throughout Prague and this has added a lot to the festival.
You also do some programmes on literature for Czech Radio.
I occasionally do a programme called Czech Books which is aimed at the English-speaking audience who are interested in Czech literature. Unfortunately it is pretty much limited to Czech authors whose works are available in English translations. For example the last interview I did was with Erazim Kohák about his interesting work on Czech identity, which was published in English as Hearth and Horizon.It's always hard for any writers to get their work translated, especially for a relatively small nation like the Czech Republic and I’m always hoping to find ways to encourage possibilities to get work translated and make it more widely available. Sometimes it is just a matter of luck.
For example, I was teaching a course here to foreign students at Charles University and a couple of years ago one of my students was an Englishman who was studying Czech and Slavic literature in London. He was very interested by a guest author who came to the class, Tereza Brdečková, who’s written a book in Czech called „The History Teacher“. She made available her unpublished English translation to the class and this year the student got in touch – now that he’s back in London and set up a small publishing house called Jantar he wants to publish it. I’m glad when little opportunities like that occur that make Czech writing available in English because I think it’s a very rich literary culture and it's good if the international audience can come to know more than the usual few well-known writers. I think this is one of the reasons why I like the festival to be an international event.
How important is the international element?
For me the multicultural aspecthas always been an especially interesting part of the festival as I find it fascinating to learn more about other poetry traditions. It is also a way of making the festival more open and without boundaries and a way of making connections with other cultures. As well as poets from abroad we also have poets from the Czech Republic who write in languages other than Czech, e.g. Romani or Sorbian.
Each year we work with the cultural institutes and invite them to bring poets from their countries. For the past years we have received a small grant from the Ministry of Culture and from the Prague Magistrat, but this sponsorship really only covers the production of publicity materials so we are totally dependent on the foreign institutions to sponsor the visiting poets. These are mainly from neighbouring or nearby countries, though we've also had poets from further afield, from Ireland, Portugal, France etc. This year the Slovak Institute brought three very interesting poets, Mila Haugová, Ivan Štrpka and Peter Repka and at Malostranska beseda we had Romanian, Hungarian, Russian and Multicultural evenings. All the readings offer a Czech translation and we try where possible to have events where there is a mix of Czech and international poets. One of the things that happens when we have these bilingual readings is that the work gets mutually translated. For example, Vít Janota this year read with the Romanian poet Ion Mureșan and so his works were translated into Romanian and hopefully they’ll be published in Romania at some point. I like there to be as much opportunity as possible for Czech poets to meet with poets from outside and vice versa and also offer the Czech audience the opportunity to hear great poets writing in languages other than Czech.
Do you also follow Prague-based poetry written in English?
Not really because there are various people in Prague who promote that and I’m really more interested in Czech literature. The opportunities to promote work in English are much greater than there are for Czech writers so I prefer to put my energy into that. In fact I think what is really interesting in the Czech scene is how lively things are outside of Prague, which is why I’m glad this festival isn’t only about the capital city. For example if you look to the north to places like Teplice, Litoměřice, Roudnice where there are fantastic poets like Radek Fridrich or Milan Děžinský, you get a sense of the great vigour in Czech poetry nationally. The festival tries to bring poets together from all over the country, from small towns and villages, not just Prague.
Could you say something about your background? How did you get to Prague?
I’ve been living here for twenty years and I'm afraid I still haven’t managed to find an interesting answer to that question.
Do you write poetry yourself?
I don’t but I’m a great reader of poetry and very much respect those who write it well. I have sometimes helped some of my Czech friends with translations of poetry and I find that work fascinating. I also teach literature so I’m very interested in literature as such, not just poetry, even though I do have a bias towards it.
Do young Czech writers have a chance of breaking through in a foreign book market?
I think it’s hard for people to get published even in their own country and to break into the international scene is very difficult for younger writers. But the internet has brought great opportunities for people to publish in other countries and a lot of great writing is available online nowadays so this is one way to find a wider audience. One of the problems, of course, is to find a good translator as this is crucial and it isn't always the case I'm afraid and the poetry can be badly lost in translation without one.
Who’s your favourite Czech writer?
I like Hrabal very much. I’m also a great fan of one of the poets of the older generation, Zbyněk Hejda, and I’m really pleased that at least some of his work is available in English and other languages as I think he is a really great poet.
And what about your foreign students? Do they have a favourite among the post-89 Czech writers?
Their responses are very varied - I teach European Erasmus students as well as Americans and they are all very different. Unfortunately students from abroad often arrive knowing only Kundera and I'm not a fan of his work at all. I try to base my teaching on virtually everything that’s available in English but it’s still not a lot. For example there are only short stories to teach of some writers - of these Přemysl Rut and Tera Fabiánová interest a lot of students. I think overall probably Jáchym Topol is the most appreciated, though the students find him a challenge to read. I also teach Patrik Ouředník's Europeana, which is a book that seems to transcend cultural boundaries. Iva Pekárková they also find interesting from a gender point of view. The American students in particular tend to find Czech literature very dark, though they do seem to appreciate Czech humour too.
Is poetry an endangered literary species in the 21st century?
We shouldn’t be too pessimistic about it. I do think people have a hunger for poetry, and you can see it from the variety of groups who are interested in an event like the Poetry Day festival. And poets will always write, whether they have an audience or not.
Do you find that children are also interested in poetry these days?
I think so. There’s one really interesting event which has been organised by the Gymnázium na Vítězné pláni as part of the Poetry Day festival for many years. They run a poetry competition for all the grammar schools in Prague. The judging is taken really seriously and for many years Viola Fischerová († 2010) was part of the judging committee, the others being Rudolf Matys and Miloslav Topinka. They gave students really serious and often very stern advice and I think this really helped and encouraged the students in their work and showed a real generosity on the side of the poets who did the judging.
A lot of students' and young people’s interest in poetry depends on their teachers, whether they are encouraged to learn and be creative, and particularly the way in which they are encouraged to read and learn from the work of classic poets, to learn from their techniques and have a sense of tradition. I think in fact that my own interest in poetry came from an inspiring teacher I had at my first school when I was about seven. The best teachers can make poetry alive for their students, rather than making them feel it is some terrible duty or something they have to learn by heart as a horrible task. Every year the great teachers in ZUŠ Lounských in Nusle, for example, create a project together with students for the Poetry Day. I managed to go to the school a couple of years ago and was really impressed by the imaginative and really interesting work the students did, including an incredible presentation of Neruda's Cosmic Songs.
Are you planning this year’s event already?
Yes, 2011 will be the thirteenth year of our festival and usually by this time of the year we are already thinking about the theme and some ideas connected to that. After each year's festival we always say we can’t carry on like this, it’s too much work, we have to make the festival smaller and more manageable so we don't lose our sanity... but it's always quite hard to do that as we always somehow get inspired to carry on beyond the practicalities of life.
Lucia Udvardyová
