The Festiwal Literacki "Port Literacki Wroclaw" / "Literary Port of Wroclaw" Literary Festival (formerly "Port Legnica / Port of Legnica") will be hosted beginning next year in the city of Wroclaw. The event will take place on an annual basis in the capital of Lower Silesia for the next five years. On Tuesday, October 14, 2003, Wroclaw city authorities signed the relevant agreement with the festival's organizer, the Biuro Literackie / Literary Bureau.
The festival is the Literary Bureau's flagship event. Its last eight editions have been held in Legnica
(more about festival in 2003...) (more about festival in 2002...). Each year, the event drew an audience of several hundred poetry aficionados from throughout the country. Between 1996 and 2003, a total of forty-one public meetings involving seventy authors, as well as twenty concerts, five theatre productions, and six exhibitions were organized in connection with the festival.
Information sent by the Literary Bureau:
Under the new agreement Wroclaw will host five editions of the literary festival and over one hundred fifty public meetings with authors. Additionally, at least seventy-five books will be published with the support of the city's local authorities. The Wroclaw Municipal Library will serve as the Literary Bureau's primary organizational and financial partner in the realization of its projects. The Bureau will take up residence in a townhouse located on Traugutta Street. Meetings, workshops, and other events will take place on Theatre Square in the "Bertelsmann Library," which is currently under construction. Plans also call for the creation of a "Port Information Point," where books and literary periodicals will be available for purchase and beginning authors will be able to turn for support and assistance.
- The Literary Festival
The ninth edition of the festival will be held in Wroclaw on April 2nd and 3rd, 2004. The event will be renamed the Wroclaw Literary Port, thus preserving the continuity of a project that was first organized in June of 1996 as the "European Meeting of Young Writers," was continued between 1997 and 1999 under the name "Fort Legnica," and has possessed the name "Port Legnica" since the year 2000. Each new name grew directly out of the incorporation of new projects and accompanying organizational changes. The most significant of the latter occurred in the year 2000, when the Literary Bureau was appointed as the event's regular organizer.
Each of the five editions of the festival will have a central theme. The next edition will be dominated by women. Five Polish women poets will present their new books to the Wroclaw public, and invitations to the festival will be extended to authors from Great Britain currently deemed to be the most interesting representatives of the middle generation. Foreign guests will also include poets from Slovenia. The festival will also include presentations by seven authors of new books published by the Literary Bureau.
- Meetings, Workshops, Internet Resources
During each year of the event in Wroclaw, the Literary Bureau will organize at least thirty public meetings with authors. The first of these will be held in January. Also scheduled for the beginning of the year is another edition of the "Warsztaty Literackie / Literary Workshops," which will focus this time on a range of different poetry genres. The organizers will publish a calendar for the year 2004; in addition to the dates of all literary meetings, this will contain caricature drawings of numerous poets by Tomasz Broda. The www.biuroliterackie.pl portal will also change in a few months with visitors gaining access to an Internet version of the "Dziennik Portowy / Port Daily," which will be supplemented with new poems, texts, and other materials almost every day. More than a dozen authors will have regular columns and departments, and a special section of the Internet-based publication will be devoted to works by debuting and beginning poets.
- Publication Plans
The Literary Bureau is the exclusive publisher of almost thirty Polish authors and it will continue to cooperate with a majority of them after it moves to Wroclaw. Traditionally, it will remain open to debut and novice authors. Each year the Bureau will publish at least fifteen books divided between a number of publishing series. A different graphic symbol designed by Tomasz Broda will render each series recognizable. New poetry will be published in the "Wiecej poezji / More Poetry" series, while new editions of the most interesting poetry volumes of the last twenty years will appear in the "Wielki kanion / Grand Canyon" series. Books for the youngest readers will appear under the motto "Poeci dla dzieci / From Poets to Children," while another publishing series will be devoted to essays, opinion pieces, interviews, and biographies. The Literary Bureau does not exclude the possibility that it will also publish prose works. Plans call for all this to be supplemented by a series consisting of translated works.
www.biuroliterackie.pl