1st PRAGUE INTERNATIONAL POETRY  FESTIVAL
16-22  May, 2004
jointly co-ordinated by the PLR (Prague Literary Review), Shakespeare & Sons Bookstore & Cafe, Twisted Spoon Press, and the InterCultural Studies Programme at Charles University

The Prague International Poetry Festival satisfies a long-standing need in Prague for a major literary event with an organic Prague-base. For this reason, the Festival will focus on local and regional writers, as well as important international poets.

Planned to coincide with the Prague Book Fair, the Poetry Festival will run from 16-22 May, and has so far attracted broad interest among writers and publishers internationally. With backing from the PLR (Prague Literary Review), the InterCultural Studies Programme at Charles University, Twisted Spoon Press and Shakespeare & Sons Bookstore in Prague, along with support from French Connections Film, Van Gogh�s Ear magazine and Shakespeare & Co in Paris, the 1st Prague International Poetry Festival is well positioned to become the major literary event in Prague in 2004.


Featured international readers at the inaugural Festival include:
CHARLES BERNSTEIN (USA)
Among Charles Bernstein's more than twenty books of poetry are With Strings (University of Chicago Press, 2001), Republics of Reality: 1975-1995 (2000), Dark City (1994), Rough Trades (1991), The Nude Formalism (1989), Stigma (1981), Legend (with Bruce Andrews, Steve McCaffery, Ron Silliman, Ray DiPalma, 1980), and Parsing (1976). He is also the author of three books of essays, My Way: Speeches and Poems (1999), A Poetics (1992), and Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984 (1986). He has edited many anthologies of poetry and poetics including Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word (1998) and The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book (1984, with Bruce Andrews). In the 1970s, Bernstein co-founded the influential journal L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. He has also written the librettos for a number of operas with composers such as Ben Yarmolinsky, Brian Ferneyhough, and Dean Drummond. Bernstein serves as the Executive Editor, and co-founder, of The Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY-Buffalo. His honors and awards include the Roy Harvey Pearce/Archive for New Poetry Prize and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Currently, he is Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.


FRANZ JOSEF CZERNIN (Austria)
Franz Josef Czernin, geboren 1952 in Wien. Matura 1971. Studium in den USA von 1971 bis 1973. Publikation von Gedichten, Prosa, Theaterst�cken, Essays und Aphorismen seit 1978. Mitglied der Grazer Autorenversammlung und des Bielefelder Colloquiums f�r neue poesie (seit 1980). 1988 Vorlesungen an der Indiana University, USA. Lebt seit 1980 vor allem in Rettenegg, Steiermark. 1993 "Stadtschreiber von Graz". Seit 1980 mehrere Staats- und Projektstipendien. 1997 Preis der Stadt Wien f�r Literatur. 1998 Heimito-von-Doderer-Peis f�r literarische Essayistik. 1999 Anton Wildgans-Preis der �sterreichischen Industrie. 2003 Heimrad-B�cker-Preis f�r Literatur.



TREVOR JOYCE (Ireland)
Born in Dublin 1947, Trevor Joyce co-founded New Writers' Press in Dublin with Michael Smith, and edited the influential journal, The Lace Curtain until the mid-70s. His poems have appeared internationally in many journals, and he has published eleven volumes of poetry, including The Poems of Sweeny Peregrine (1976), his working of the middle-Irish Buile Suibhne, and stone floods (1995), which was nominated for the Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry. All these books have come through small presses, where openness to invention compensates for lack of publicity, wide distribution or commercial promotion. Much of Joyce's recent work reaches beyond the conventional medium of the printed page, and explores possibilities of writing in the new electronic media and in association with other disciplines. His collected poems, with the first dream of fire they hunt the cold (NWP & Shearsman Books) and the audio CD Red Noise of Bones (Coelacanth & Wild Honey Press) appeared in 2001. He has also published several papers on contemporary poetics, and has lectured and given public readings of his work throughout Ireland, the U.K. and the U.S.A. Founder and director since 1997 of SoundEye: The Cork International Poetry Festival, he served as Writer in Residence for Cork County Council, 2001, and for NUIG, 2001-2002, and was Fulbright Scholar, at Boston College, Massachussetts, in 2002-2003, researching specific overlaps between science, history, and both traditional and innovative poetic form.


JOHN KINSELLA (Australia)
John Kinsella is the author of twenty books, including Poems 1980�1994 and volume of poetry The Hunt (a Poetry Book Society Recommendation) were published in May 1998 by Bloodaxe in the UK and USA, The Undertow: New & Selected Poems (Arc, U.K), Visitants (Bloodaxe, 1999), Wheatlands (with Dorothy Hewett in 2000), and The Hierarchy of Sheep (Bloodaxe/FACP, 2001). He is the editor of the international literary journal Salt, a Consultant Editor to Westerly (CSAL, University of Western Australia), Cambridge correspondent for Overland (Melbourne, Australia), and International Editor of the American journal The Kenyon Review. A novel Genre was published in 1997 (Fremantle Arts Centre Press) and Grappling Eros in late 1998 (FACP). His most recent volume is Peripheral Light (Norton, 2003). He co-edited (with Joseph Parisi) a double issue of Australian poetry for the American journal Poetry and has been appointed the Richard L Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College in the United States for 2001. He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and Adjunct Professor to Edith Cowan University, Western Australia.


ANSELM HOLLO (Finland)
Anselm Hollo was born in Helsinki, Finland. In his early twenties, he left Finland to live and work as a writer and translator, first in Germany and Austria, then in London, where he was employed by the BBC's European Services in their Finnish Program from 1958 to 1967. Translations into Finnish from that time include Allen Ginsberg's Howl and John Lennon's In His Own Write. He is an Associate Professor in the Graduate Writing and Poetics Department at The Naropa Institute. Hollo has published more than thirty-five books and chapbooks of his poetry, most recently Corvus (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1995) and AHOE (Erie CO: Smokeproof Press, 1997). He has also translated many contemporary Finnish poets, among them Paavo Haavikko (Selected Poems 1949 - 1988, Manchester UK: Carcanet Press, 1991) and Pentti Saarikoski (Trilogy: the last three books, Los Angeles CA: Sun & Moon, 1998), as well as fiction, plays, and poetry (by a.o. Brecht, Paul Klee, Genet, Blok, Louis Malle) from the German, French, Swedish, and Finnish. Hollo's honors and awards include the New York State Creative Artists' Public Service Award (1976), a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Poet's Fellowship (1979), Fund for Poetry Awards for Contributions to Contemporary Poetry (1989, 1991), and a Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry 1995-1996 (1996).


ALES DEBELJAK (Slovenia)
Ales Debeljak graduated in comparative literature from the University of Ljubljana and received his Ph.D. in Social Thought from Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, New York. He was a Senior Fulbright fellow at the University of California-Berkeley and a fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study-Collegium Budapest. His books of  poems in English translation include Anxious Moments (White Pine Press, Fredonia, NY: 1994), Dictionary of Silence (Lumen Press, Santa Fe, NM: 1999) and The City and the Child (White Pine Press, Buffalo, NY: 1999). His non-fiction books include Twilight of the Idols: Recollections of a Lost Yugoslavia (White Pine Press, Fredonia, NY: 1994) and Reluctant Modernity: The Institution of Art and its Historical Forms (Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham-New York-London: 1998) and a comprehensive anthology The Imagination of Terra Incognita: Slovenian Writing 1945-1995 (White Pine Press, Buffalo: 1997) which he edited. He received the Preseren Foundation Prize (Slovenian National Book Award) and Miriam Lindberg Israel Poetry for Peace Prize-Tel Aviv and Chiqyu Poetry Prize, Tokyo and was named Ambassador of Scholarship of the Republic of Slovenia. Debeljak teaches at the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Ljubljana and directs the Centre for Religious and Cultural Studies.



TODD SWIFT (Canada)
Todd Swift was born in Montreal, Canada in 1966.  In 1990 he was nominated to the League of Canadian Poets, as a full member.  In 1997 he moved to Budapest, Hungary where he founded the bilingual literary cabaret series, Kacat Kabare.  He has had his work performed internationally, from Tokyo to New York, Panama City to Frankfurt.  His work has appeared on ABC, BBC and CBC, among others.  His poems have appeared in such journals as Gargoyle, Geist, Jacket, and Van Gogh's Ear.  He is editorial coordinator for US-based Poets Against The War.  A full member of the WGC, he has recently optioned a film about the life of Irish patriot Emmet, and is developing a new screenwork on the life of Empson, with Peter Robinson.  His books include Poetry Nation: The North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry (edited with Regie Cabico; Vehicule Press, Montreal, 1998); Budavox: poems 1990-1999 (DC Books, Montreal, 1999); Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry (edited with Phil Norton; Rattapallax, New York, 2002); Cafe Alibi (DC Books, Montreal, 2002); 100 Poets Against The War (ed; Salt, Cambridge, 2003); as well as the spoken word/musique actuelle CD Swifty Lazarus: The Envelope, Please (with Tom Walsh; Wired on Words, Montreal, 2002). He is poetry editor of www.nthposition.com and contributing editor for Matrix. 



DREW MILNE (UK)
Drew Milne is Judith E. Wilson Lecturer in Drama and Poetry at Cambridge University, and a fellow of Trinity Hall. His books include Marxist Literary Theory (ed. with Terry Eagleton; Blackwell, 1996) and The Damage: New and Selected Poems (Salt, 2001). He is the editor of Parataxis: Modernism & Modern Writing and associate editor of the PLR (Prague Literary Review).



TADEUSZ PIORO (Poland)
Tadeusz Pioro was born in 1960 and currently works in Warsaw at the Polish Publishing Institute. He is the author of Dom bez kantow (House without corners) (1992), Okeete (1993), Wiersze okolicznosciowe (Circumstantial Poems) (Lublin, 1997). His translations into Polish include texts by Ashbery, Firbank and Pound.


KESTON SUTHERLAND (UK)
Keston Sutherland is a poet, producer of critical and philosophical essays, editor of QUID and (with Andrea Brady) of Barque Press (whose latest project was 100 Days, a collection of invectives against George W. Bush, featuring contributions from over 90 writers worldwide). His books include Mincemeat Seesaw (1999), [Bar Zero] (2000) and Aintifreeze (2001). He is the editor of The Salt Companion to John Wilkinson.


Also featuring
ANDRZEJ SOSNOWSKI (Poland), LOUIS ARMAND (Prague), FRITZ WIDHALM (Austria), JAROMIR KONECNY (Germany), GABY BILA-GUNTHER (Romania/Australia), SUDEEP SEN (India), ANZHELINA POLONSKAYA (Russia), TRAVIS JEPPESEN, LAURA CONWAY, VINCENT FARNSWORTH (USA), PHIL SHOENFELT (UK), VIT KREMLICKA, VERA CHASE, SIMON SAFRANEK (Czechia); KAI NIEMINEN (Finland); PIERRE DAGUIN (France);  S�NDOR K�NY�DI (Hungary); VANESSA FERNANDEZ, DESMOND KON, NOELLE PERERA (Singapore); TOMAZ SALAMUN (Slovenia); ROD MENGHAM (UK); GWENDOLYN ALBERT (USA) ... & many more.


For further information please contact the organisers at
[email protected]


Programme details will be posted at this website April 2004.
The PRAGUE INTERNATIONAL POETRY FESTIVAL would like to thank Literarni Noviny, the Goethe-Institut Prag, The Finish Literature Information Service, Scandanivian House-Prague, Austrade, Austrian Forum, the Polish Institute, the Australia Council for their support.
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