Article
4 – 7 September 2002
Vilenica Literature Festival, Slovenia
January 18, 2006
The rather hallowed atmosphere of the opening night gives way, on the second day, to the bustle of practical workshops on “poetry and image”, on poetry translation and on poetry on the Internet. Heiko Strunk, of the German project Lyrikline, uses a CD-ROM to demonstrate the workings of his website, featuring many poets from Germany and other countries. All these poets can be read as well as heard online. Bea Klotz presents her Central Eastern European Libraries On Line, which informs about the culture and other aspects of Central Europe. In a nearby village the organisation buys thirty meters of telephone cable, needed for the presentation of Poetry International Web. Project manager Arnolda Jagersma then whets the workshop participants’ appetites telling them about this new international poetry website, to be launched in a few weeks.
The evening event is held in the village church of nearby Lokev. The villagers are taking a big hand in the festival, with the village choir giving a commendable rendition of a piece by some Slovenian composer. The poetry presentations that night will be among the most impressive of the festival; once the Austrian Oswald Egger starts reading, everyone in the little church listens with bated breath. Egger’s poems rather keep to themselves on the printed page, but he knows how to read them as if they were part of a thrilling story, or a radio play — something goes on here that does not happen in poetry every day. After Egger comes Knut Ødegård from Norway. “The big cows come swaying out of my childhood”, reads Ødegård, and his voice, which completely fills the church, conjures up the cows, swishing their tails at the flies. And under the eyes of the twelve apostles at their last supper, Willem van Toorn from the Netherlands reads: “The dream breaks where I shall go in unto you. / Hillsides. The garden. Too big for this understanding.” The Lokev choir concludes the evening with a rousing “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah”. Outside, a barbecue party awaits the churchgoers, courtesy of the villagers. There is plenty of meat and bread, and delicious sweets for dessert. Beer and wine flow copiously. The choir keeps going all evening and the party roars on till the wee small hours.
On Friday we go on a trip to Ljubljana where, at the end of the day, the third poetry reading night of the festival will be held at the castle, perched on a hill overlooking the stylish, attractive Slovenian capital, which could be a little sister of Prague. Equally stylish is the reception at the castle that night, with Ljubljana’s mayor and the Slovenian president in attendance. The mayor, in her opening speech, praises the Vilenica festival as “a cornerstone of Slovenia’s cultural identity”. The evening is dedicated to the Rumanian poetess Ana Blandiana, who is to receive this year’s Vilenica Award, a prestigious prize, earlier awarded to such writers as Peter Handke, Milan Kundera, Zbiegniew Herbert, Slavko Mihalic and Jaan Kaplinski. Slowly, the evening builds up to a climax. Hertha Müller enthralls her audience presenting her collages; Janis Rokpelnis from Latvia makes his poems echo around the castle walls, and then it’s time for Ana Blandiana. She mounts the platform like a diva, after being accoladed in Slovenian as well as English. Blandiana’s charisma is as great as her presentation is small. Her words are wispy as the clouds that shroud the gods in her poetry. She has her audience under a spell.
On the last day of the festival, riding from Lipica to Stanjel among green hills and through villages where no stone seems to have been turned since people first settled there, we realize once more how beautiful Slovenia is. Stanjel itself was built in the shape of a castle. Being welcomed in the walled courtyard with fresh figs, prunes, grapes and an apéritif, we can imagine this festival taking place in the Middle Ages, and our poets briefly back in their role of troubadours.
This morning there is time for politics — the poet Vidosav Stevanovic makes a statement about his time in exile; he is not the only poet to have been forced to leave the former Yugoslavia — and more time for poetry, like that of Jaan Kaplinski, whose work has just been published in a new Slovenian translation. His words, “In order to write poetry, you must have been lazy in your youth”, seem to be aimed directly at Vilenica’s youngest participant, Ana Salgaj, whose poem “River” has won her the Young Vilenica Award: “The happiest thing in this world / is a river, a river that calmly flows into vales (...)”.
The caves of Vilenica present the backdrop for the closing ceremony of the festival. Dressed in wintry garb, we all descend into the breathtaking subterranean hall to take our place on the wooden benches. Schnaps is provided for. Britain’s Ken Smith is a public’s darling. His ironic poem “The Secret Police” receives a standing ovation. Then, as groundwater drips down from the stalagtites onto the visitors’ heads, the last performing poet of Vilenica 2002 makes her appearance: Ana Blandiana. Her poetry, says the jury of the Vilenica 2002 Award, “unites the cultures of western and eastern Europe, and that is what literature is all about: uniting cultures”. After the readings, a group of festivalgoers descends farther into the cave, aided by torchlight and guide. Back at the surface they join the others for sausage, bread, sweet cakes and wine. The day is still young. Outside a band plays popular songs from Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia, all the states that once made up Yugoslavia. It inspires sadness in some, joy or mixed feelings in others. Everyone joins the dance, to celebrate a lovely festival.
The poetry festival of Vilenica in Slovenia takes its visitors to unusual, lovely, almost medieval locations. Janita Monna reports.
With a voice that makes the trees shed their leaves, the Spanish poet Jorge Justo Padron reads his poems. Watched over by the Virgin Mary, the audience, seated on wooden benches by candlelight, allow themselves to be carried along by the Spanish sounds. Autumn has come with a nip in the air in Lipica’s “Valley of the Mother of God”. In and around the village of Lipica, world-famous for its Lippizan horses, the Vilenica poetry festival runs its course. For four days, in highly unusual locations, poets and prose writers from around the world read their own work. Besides, there are workshops, presentations and plenty of excursions. For four days, a hundred poets and other guests of the festival double Lipica’s population.The rather hallowed atmosphere of the opening night gives way, on the second day, to the bustle of practical workshops on “poetry and image”, on poetry translation and on poetry on the Internet. Heiko Strunk, of the German project Lyrikline, uses a CD-ROM to demonstrate the workings of his website, featuring many poets from Germany and other countries. All these poets can be read as well as heard online. Bea Klotz presents her Central Eastern European Libraries On Line, which informs about the culture and other aspects of Central Europe. In a nearby village the organisation buys thirty meters of telephone cable, needed for the presentation of Poetry International Web. Project manager Arnolda Jagersma then whets the workshop participants’ appetites telling them about this new international poetry website, to be launched in a few weeks.
The evening event is held in the village church of nearby Lokev. The villagers are taking a big hand in the festival, with the village choir giving a commendable rendition of a piece by some Slovenian composer. The poetry presentations that night will be among the most impressive of the festival; once the Austrian Oswald Egger starts reading, everyone in the little church listens with bated breath. Egger’s poems rather keep to themselves on the printed page, but he knows how to read them as if they were part of a thrilling story, or a radio play — something goes on here that does not happen in poetry every day. After Egger comes Knut Ødegård from Norway. “The big cows come swaying out of my childhood”, reads Ødegård, and his voice, which completely fills the church, conjures up the cows, swishing their tails at the flies. And under the eyes of the twelve apostles at their last supper, Willem van Toorn from the Netherlands reads: “The dream breaks where I shall go in unto you. / Hillsides. The garden. Too big for this understanding.” The Lokev choir concludes the evening with a rousing “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah”. Outside, a barbecue party awaits the churchgoers, courtesy of the villagers. There is plenty of meat and bread, and delicious sweets for dessert. Beer and wine flow copiously. The choir keeps going all evening and the party roars on till the wee small hours.
On Friday we go on a trip to Ljubljana where, at the end of the day, the third poetry reading night of the festival will be held at the castle, perched on a hill overlooking the stylish, attractive Slovenian capital, which could be a little sister of Prague. Equally stylish is the reception at the castle that night, with Ljubljana’s mayor and the Slovenian president in attendance. The mayor, in her opening speech, praises the Vilenica festival as “a cornerstone of Slovenia’s cultural identity”. The evening is dedicated to the Rumanian poetess Ana Blandiana, who is to receive this year’s Vilenica Award, a prestigious prize, earlier awarded to such writers as Peter Handke, Milan Kundera, Zbiegniew Herbert, Slavko Mihalic and Jaan Kaplinski. Slowly, the evening builds up to a climax. Hertha Müller enthralls her audience presenting her collages; Janis Rokpelnis from Latvia makes his poems echo around the castle walls, and then it’s time for Ana Blandiana. She mounts the platform like a diva, after being accoladed in Slovenian as well as English. Blandiana’s charisma is as great as her presentation is small. Her words are wispy as the clouds that shroud the gods in her poetry. She has her audience under a spell.
On the last day of the festival, riding from Lipica to S
This morning there is time for politics — the poet Vidosav Stevanovic makes a statement about his time in exile; he is not the only poet to have been forced to leave the former Yugoslavia — and more time for poetry, like that of Jaan Kaplinski, whose work has just been published in a new Slovenian translation. His words, “In order to write poetry, you must have been lazy in your youth”, seem to be aimed directly at Vilenica’s youngest participant, Ana Salgaj, whose poem “River” has won her the Young Vilenica Award: “The happiest thing in this world / is a river, a river that calmly flows into vales (...)”.
The caves of Vilenica present the backdrop for the closing ceremony of the festival. Dressed in wintry garb, we all descend into the breathtaking subterranean hall to take our place on the wooden benches. Schnaps is provided for. Britain’s Ken Smith is a public’s darling. His ironic poem “The Secret Police” receives a standing ovation. Then, as groundwater drips down from the stalagtites onto the visitors’ heads, the last performing poet of Vilenica 2002 makes her appearance: Ana Blandiana. Her poetry, says the jury of the Vilenica 2002 Award, “unites the cultures of western and eastern Europe, and that is what literature is all about: uniting cultures”. After the readings, a group of festivalgoers descends farther into the cave, aided by torchlight and guide. Back at the surface they join the others for sausage, bread, sweet cakes and wine. The day is still young. Outside a band plays popular songs from Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia, all the states that once made up Yugoslavia. It inspires sadness in some, joy or mixed feelings in others. Everyone joins the dance, to celebrate a lovely festival.
© Janita Monna
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