On 20 March 2023 at 7 p.m., the fourth poetry evening entitled ‘Contemporary European Poetry’ was organised by the ARTeria Foundation in Gliwice as part of the international project Poets of Today – Voices of Tomorrow.
In the unusual setting of a post-industrial hall, a large audience listened to poets from the five countries of the project partnership. Their poetry was presented and performed by:
Anja Zag Golob (born 1976) Slovenia
Poet, publicist, translator and editor-in-chief and co-founder of the publishing house VigeVageKnjige, which specialises in publishing comics and graphic novels. She has published four collections of poetry in Slovenian. She is a two-time winner of the central Slovenian Simon Jenka Poetry Prize and has also received the award of the Association of Slovenian Literary Critics. Her poems have been translated into more than 10 languages and have appeared in several anthologies. She lives with her family in Ljubljana and Maribor.
Harri Hertell (born 1985) Finland
Helsinki-based poet, DJ and producer of poetry events. He is the author of seven poetry collections, a non-fiction book on performance poetry, and published his first poetry book for children in autumn 2022. He is the winner of the Uusimaa Art Prize (2021). In 2008, he founded the Helsinki Poetry Connection collective. His poetry has been translated into many languages and he has performed in several European countries. His first English-language book of poetry, All Emotions Allowed, was published in autumn 2023.
Radmila Petrović (born 1996) Serbia
Poet extremely popular in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. At the age of sixteen, she won a competition for the best unpublished volume of poetry, making her debut with the collection Miris zemlje (2014). A year later, as the winner of the Desanka Maksimović poetry competition, she published the volume Celulozni rokenrol (2015). Her collection Moja mama zna šta se dešava u gradovima (2020), which sold more than 12,000 copies and was translated into many languages, was a huge success. It was shortlisted for all the most important poetry prizes in Serbia. She has published in numerous anthologies and literary magazines, participated in poetry festivals across Europe and artist residencies. Her poems have been translated into English, French, Greek, Italian, Slovenian, Spanish and Hebrew, among others. She holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Belgrade.
Małgorzata Lebda (born 1985) Poland
She grew up in the Beskid village of Żeleźnikowa Wielka. Author of six books of poetry, including the award-winning volumes Matecznik and Sny uckermärkerów (Gdynia Literary Award 2019). The last volume, Mer de Glace, was awarded Poland’s most important poetry prize, the Wisława Szymborska Award, in 2022. Her books have been published in translation into Serbian, Italian, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovenian (a book in Danish translation will be published in early 2023). Researcher. Columnist. Cultural animator. Ultramarathoner. Activist. In September 2021, she ran – as a poetic and activist gesture – a distance of 1113 kilometres, running from the source of the Vistula River to its mouth on the Baltic Sea. Her prose debut ‘Greedy’ was published in 2023 and was recently awarded the title ‘Empik Discovery 2023’
Márton Simon (born 1984) Hungary
Poet – one of the most widely read Hungarian authors of the last decade. Translator from the Japanese language. Studied aesthetics, literature and creative writing. He has published several collections of poetry, including: Songs for Mezzanine (2010),Polaroids (2013), Fox Wedding (2018) and At Night in the Kitchen I Wanted to Talk to You (2021). He has participated in many poetry slams (since 2011) and has performed in Serbia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Italy. He has participated in the Spoke’n’Word Festival in Warsaw (2012, 2014) and the Transpoesie Festival in Brussels (2014), and has organised countless creative writing workshops and other literary events.
Gliwice Technical Equipment Works was a partner of the event.
Co-financed from the funds of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland