September, 2–4 – II International Poetry Festival MERIDIAN CZERNOWITZ

2–4.09 takes place II International Poetry Festival MERIDIAN CZERNOWITZ. It has the main aim to bring back Chernivtsy onto the cultural map of Europe and to develop interaction between contemporary Ukrainian poets and their colleagues abroad.

Festival participants are the most intriguing and famous poets, musicians, videographic artists from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Russia, Moldova, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, France, Great Britain and USA. The majority of the participants and special guests have already confirmed their coming. Among them are: Michael Augustin, Uljana Wolf and Hans-Michael Speier from Germany; Robert Schindel and Milena Findeis from Austria; Ilma Rakusa, Raphael Urweider, Erwin Messmer and Hans Ruprecht from Switzerland; Emmanuel Moses and Bruno Geneste from France; Hagit Grossman from Israel; Bohdan Zadura from Poland; Grigore Chiper from Moldova; and also from Ukraine: Yuriy Andrukhowych, Serhiy Zhadan, Igor Pomerantsev, Andriy Bondar, Oleksandr Irvanets, Ostap Slyvynskiy, Bogdana Matiyash, Kateryna Babkina and others. Selected works of the authors participating in the Festival will be published in the collected volume both in the original language and in translation by Mark Belorusets (Ukraine), Claudia Dathe (Germany), Stefania Ptashnyk (Germany), Petro Ryhlo (Ukraine) and others

The program of the festival embraces not only poetry readings, discussions, lectures, but also photopoetry and sculpture exhibitions connected to poetry, theatrical and musical performances, book presentations, videopoetry, poetry in multiplication, ska-punk poetry, jazz-rock poetry and  electropoetry (specific musical and poetic mixes), video installations on the outer walls of buildings and many other diverse circumpoetical events.

On September 4 (at the closing of the festival) the audience will have chance to appraise the updated version of the project “Aperitif” that combines Yuriy Andrukhowych poetry, music of the polish group Karbido and visual images by vj-group Cube and ArtPole. The creative co-operation of the Ukrainian poet and Polish musicians lasts for seven years already. They have recorded two joint albums and played dozens of concerts. The visual component was added three years ago. Since then the writer, musicians and videoartists are in constant co-operation and in search for the absolute form embracing music, word and imaging. Yuriy Andrukhowych: “On the way to our third album “Absinth” we decided to play a concert that will be some kind of a special quintessence from the previous two albums. We have played the alike program in Berlin, and then in several cities of Ukraine and Poland. And not only we enjoyed it, but also did the audience. But the Chernivtsy concert will be slightly different as it will include some absolute first runs. So, we are approaching to the last album in the trilogy”.