A cold and wet October day saw the inauguration of the Czeslaw Milosz Literary Festival.
Click on the audio icon above to listen to the report by John Beauchamp.
The event, organised by the Polish Book Institute and hosted in part by Znak, is the first such meeting since the great Polish writer’s death 5 years ago. Even though it is a new bi-annual literary feast, it is certainly not the first such meeting to attract such writers as Nobel laureates Wislawa Szymborksa or Seamus Heaney.
One of the most celebrated poets to attend the festival was Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney. Other Nobel laureates included Wisława Szymborska and Derek Walcott, who was to attend but due to ill health appeared via satellite link-up to read his poetry in Krakow.
The first Czeslaw Milosz Literary festival saw poetry readings, round-table discussions on debates on such topics as language and empires, a poignant subject that rang with poets, many of whom had been forced into exile or imprisoned and tortured in their own countries. The next edition of the festival is to be held in two years time, on the centenary of Milosz’s birth in 1911.