Just back from a visit to "Poetry Autumn in Druskininkai", a key event in
the Lithuanian poetry calendar, and thought I'd give a quick report:
Druskininkai is a small town on the Lithuanian / Ukrainian / Polish border
- it's been on different sides of the border at different times. This is
the 9th year they've had a "Poetry Autumn" there, under the organisation
of poet Kornelijus Platelis, and when it started it was a pretty brave
thing to do, in direct opposition to the "official" poetry events. It's
now grown from a small, almost family affair, to a gathering of well over
100 lithuanian poets, critics, performance artists etc, and a small but
growing group of "International Guest Poets" from Denmark, Poland, Mexico,
Czech Republic, Latvia, USA, Byelorussia, and Yrs Trly from the UK. Some
of the locals are less than happy with the influx of offcomers, but I was
treated kindly and generously - I'm happy to say.
There were two days of poetry readings and discussions, in which the
Greats of Lithuanian poetry took part, as well as younger, emerging poets.
Poetic heroes of the Lithuanian freedom movement including Sigitas Geda
and Vytautas Bloze (sorry about the lack of accents) were there, joining
the discussion, but they didn't read, which I was sorry for. My lithuanian
is not great, so I was pleased that they had simultaneous translation
available for discussions and intros, and a kind young poet had translated
some of my work so when I came to read he could float the translations
first, before my own readings. His translations seemed good to me, he'd
responded quite closely to the rhythms of my work and we talked beforehand
to bang out vocab difficulties.
I was pleased to see that although the festival has now become a regular
fixture (Platelis became Minister of Education this year, so the event had
no difficulty in getting sponsors, including the local brewery, and in
getting the Culture minister to turn up to give awards) it still promotes
(a) a special young poets nite in the pub and (b) performance events, of
which, I'm told, there's a strong tradition in Lithuania. By the end of my
time there some tensions where emerging (perhaps because of the vodka?)
between the older and younger end of things (these youngsters just don't
show proper respect for their elders etc) but at least there was a real
cross section there. Apart from real literary type poets with degrees and
all there were also some rural versifiers from fairly remote communities -
so to my untutored eye it looked like the range was covered, though women
poets were under-represented.
The whole event finished with a party, with open-mike poetry for prizes,
and a pretty lively dancing session, the like of which I can't remember in
UK poetry events. Also alien to me was the sight of the poet who won the
Whole Roast Pig in the poetry competion: he picked it up, kissed it,
danced round the room with it over his head. I can't see that happening
at Subvoicive, or CCCP, or Colpitts (for instance), can you?
I was struck, listening to the readers, how much it was assumed that you
had to project, almost sing the work. That made it good for me to listen
to even when (inevitably) I hadn't a clue what was going on, and the
notebook's bristling with little phonic jottings which don't fit anywhere
yet. Lithuania's a bad place to go if you're vegetarian (I don't want to
see another cabbage for a very long time) of if cig smoke gets to you -
but it's worth it for the forests, in autumn, and for Vilnius, one of the
homiest small capitals I've been to. And the poetry, of course.
There are other members of this list who also have experience of poetry in
the Baltics, and I'd welcome reports from them!
RC
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