How creators and artists experience the state of book publishing on the market, what are the conditions for creating a genre, and is poetry declining in popularity are just a few of the questions that the Prepišno uredništvo festival of reading culture sought to answer between 20 and 23 May.
The 12th edition of the festival, subtitled The Prisms of Poetry, focused on poetry, which was also the subject of a series of short lectures by poets.
Slovenian literary space can boast a large number of quality poets, some would even say that we are a nation of poetry.
-
The aim of the festival was to spread affection for poems, for reading them and for sending them out into the world. Photo: Andreja Seršen Dobaj/STA
-
Poets, readers and translators spoke about poetry at the festival events and presented themselves in a series of short lectures. Photo: Daniel Novakovič/STA
Writing poetry cannot be taught
The invited poets discussed these topics in short lectures. At the festival, we listened to readings from debut poetry collections, enjoyed poetry-themed musical performances and experienced a special edition of Poetry on the Podium. This featured recordings of readings by poets, collected on old vinyl records from the Gregor Podlogar archive. The workshop also offered the opportunity to try writing your own poetry.
"Every poetry workshop should probably start with a caveat - poetry writing cannot be taught, at least not in the way we teach most everything else," wrote Jernej Županič, who led the workshops. As he explained, the workshops did not attempt to outline unambiguous rules for good writing, nor to set up a system for the construction of an ideal poem. Instead, they looked at some selected aspects of poetry and poetry writing on the basis of the poems sent in by the participants, and commented on and tried out some alternative approaches.
Date: 24. May 2024
Time to read: 2 min
