In our latest feature, Stephan Delbos recalls some highlights from the inaugural Prague Micro Festival Poetry Series, held in Prague and Brno between 14-18 April 2009. To accompany the words and images, Cordite presents five live recordings of readings by Australian poets Jill Jones, Philip Hammial, Michael Farrell, Pam Brown and Louis Armand at the Globe Bookstore on 15 April 2009.
A baker's dozen of international poets gathered to read their work in one city is no ordinary occurrence. Sponsored by the Irish Council of Foreign Affairs, the Australia Council for the Arts, and Prague's Charles University, the Prague Micro-Festival Poetry Series featured 13 poets in a five night series of readings which spanned continents, languages, generations and aesthetics. Despite the name, the festival was micro only in the sense that basically the same poets read each night, albeit to different audiences in varying locations.
Each poet in the festival had a distinct reading style, which lent every evening a kind of smorgasbord appeal. At the same time, readers reacted and performed differently each night, depending on the venue and audience. From the quiet internal monologues of Pam Brown to the confrontational engagement of Philip Hammial and the lyrical robot language of Michael Farrell's experimental and at times silent poetry, attendees of the Micro-Festival were treated to a week of evening readings which were erratic and always entertaining.
Also featured in the festival were Louis Armand, the festival's organizer, and Vincent Farnsworth, both long-term Prague residents who were vitally active in the Prague poetry scene in erstwhile years, but recently have given only rare readings, making their participation especially enjoyable.
The festival began and ended at Shakespeare and Sons, a used bookstore and café in a quiet neighborhood catering equally to Czechs and expatriates. The quaint back room offered an ambient setting for the readings, with bookshelves insulating those gathered in good company.
The Globe bookstore and café, a centrally-located store which caters mostly to the expatriate community, hosted a mixer, complete with complementary refreshment courtesy of the Irish Embassy. Café Fra, a small Czech bookstore, hosted a rainy night of poetry in English and Czech, translated by hosts David Vichnar and Liz Skrbkova. Irish poet Justin Quinn read original work and translations of Czech poet Petr Borkovec, who gave a riveting reading in Czech.
Mid-week the intrepid international cadre of poets ventured four hours east to Brno, where they were graciously hosted by Sklenena Louka for an evening of wine and poetry in English and Czech in the Czech Republic's other capital.
The Micro-Festival Poetry Series introduced some of the best contemporary Irish, American, Australian and Czech poets to English and Czech language audiences in Prague while introducing the city and the city's poets and literary journals, such as The Prague Revue, to international visitors. Most importantly for Prague residents, the festival built a rare bridge between Prague's academic poetry circles and those of the less-established younger generation. One can only hope this is the first of such expansively inclusive poetry festivals aided by the generosity of culturally-appreciative establishments in Prague and elsewhere.
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Pam Brown live at the Globe (11:24)
Pam Brown (1948 – ) was born in Seymour, Victoria, but since her early twenties, she has mostly lived in Sydney. She has made her living as a musician and film-maker, has taught writing, multi-media studies and film-making and worked during the 90s as a librarian at University of Sydney. From 1997 to 2002 Pam Brown was the poetry editor of Overland and since 2004 has been the associate editor of Jacket magazine. She has been a guest at poetry festivals world-wide, taught at the University for Foreign Languages, Hanoi, and during 2003 undertook an Australia Council writers residency in Rome. Her publications contain more than a dozen poetry collections, from the early Sureblock (1972) to the volume of selected poems Dear Deliria (2003) and her most recent book Peel Me a Zibbibo (2006).
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Jill Jones live at the Globe (8:50)
Jill Jones (1961 – ) is a poet and writer living in Sydney, Australia. In 1993 she won the Mary Gilmore Prize for her first book of poetry, The Mask and the Jagged Star (Hazard Press). Her third book, The Book of Possibilities (Hale & Iremonger), was published in 1997. It was shortlisted for the National Book Council 'Banjo' Awards and the Adelaide Festival Awards. Her fourth book, Screens, Jets, Heaven: New and Selected Poems, was published by Salt Publishing in 2002. It won the 2003 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry (NSW Premier's Literary Awards). Her fifth full-length book, Broken/Open was published by Salt Publishing in 2005. It was shortlisted for The Age Poetry Book of the Year 2005 and the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize 2006. She served as a judge for the 1995 NSW Premier's Literary Awards and for the inaugural Broadway Poetry Prize in 2001.
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Michael Farrell live at the Globe (10:23)
Michael Farrell (1965 – ) was born in country New South Wales. He is a PhD student at the University of Melbourne. He has published 2 books of poetry: ode ode (Salt, 2002) and a raiders guide (Giramondo, 2008); also a cartoon poetry book BREAK ME OUCH (3 Deep, 2006). He is included in the Penguin Book of Australian Poetry and several 'Best of' anthologies. His poems have been translated in Dutch, Slovenian (for the Vilenica festival in 2001), and Japanese (for an Asialink residency in Nagoya, 2007/8).
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Philip Hammial live at the Globe (13:29)
Philip Roby Hammial (1937 – ) is an Australian poet, publisher, editor, artist and art curator. He has a long list of achievements in writing, publishing and sculpting. His achievements include twenty collections of poetry, and thirty solo sculpture exhibitions. Hammial's significance to Australian poetry has been recognised by the Australia Council, which awarded him a Senior Writer's Fellowship in 1996, and an Established Writer's Fellowship in 2004. Two of his poetry collections were short-listed for the Kenneth Slessor Prize – Bread in 2001 and In the Year of Our Lord Slaughter's Children in 2004. He has represented Australia at four overseas poetry festivals on four different continents.
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Louis Armand live at the Globe (15:29)
Louis Armand (1972 – ) was born in Sydney and since 1994 has lived in Prague, where he is the director of the Centre for Critical & Cultural Theory in the Philosophy Faculty at Charles University. He is the author of two volumes of prose fiction and has authored and edited a dozen volumes of non-fiction, including Contemporary Poetics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007). His poetry has appeared in Meanin, Sulfur, New York Quarterly, as well as The Best Australian Poems 2008 and the Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry. His most recent collections include Picture Primitive (2006), Strange Attractors (2003) and Malice in Underland (2003). In 1997 he received the Max Harris Prize for Poetry at the Penola Festival (Adelaide) and in 2000 he was awarded the Nassau Review Prize (New York). He is general editor at the Prague-based publishing house Litteraria Pragensia and founder of the Prague International Poetry Festival.
Other guests at the Festival included Maurice Scully (IRL), Martin Rainer (CZ), Justin Quinn (IRL), Kevin Nolan (UK), Tomáš Míka (CZ), Trevor Joyce (IRL), Vincent Farnsworth (USA), Petr Borkovec (CZ) and Stephan Delbos (USA).
Stephan Delbos (1982 – ) is a New England-born poet living in Prague, where he teaches at Charles University College and edits several literary publications, including The Prague Revue. His poetry and essays have appeared most recently or are forthcoming in New Letters, Atlanta Review, Rain Taxi, Born Magazine, Poetry International and Poetry Salzburg Review.
Thanks to Vincent Farnsworth for his recordings of the poets' readings.
