Miłosz Festiwal 2023: Songs About the End of the World

Miłosz Festival is one of the most prominent poetry events in Poland and in Central-Eastern Europe. In 2017, it was awarded with a prestigious title of Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe organisation (EFFE). The Festival promotes Polish national literary heritage and brings the quality and variety of world poetry to its audiences. It does so through its rich and diverse programme, which includes meetings with established as well as emerging authors, writing and translating workshops, performances, poetry slams and other interdisciplinary events connecting poetry and various art forms, collaboration with publishing houses and literary magazines in the popularisation of poetry, poetry translation and poetry criticism. The mission of its organisers is to cultivate and widely promote poetry. The event continues the tradition of Meeting of Poets of the East and West initiated by Nobel Prize winners, Czesław Miłosz and Wisława Szymborska. For twelve years now, Miłosz Festival has been a platform for the international poets’ voices, fostering bonds between literary creators different languages and cultural circles. In the past, the Festival was attended by critically acclaimed and renowned poets, including: Adonis, Vera Burlak, Clare Cavanagh, Bei Dao, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Ashur Etwebi, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Seamus Heaney, Jane Hirshfield, Tyehimba Jess, Denise Riley, Ewa Lipska, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Michael Ondaatje, Robert Pinsky, Olga Sedakova, Zadie Smith, Gary Snyder, Wisława Szymborska, Dubravka Ugrešić, Ko Un and countless other authors from around the globe. The Festival also has been instrumental in bringing about over a hundred book publications of poetry, especially poetry in translation. In 2023, we upheld this tradition by addressing current matters we deem most urgent – such as the collapse of communities, the climate crisis as well as the violence we observe, particularly with regards to the war in Ukraine – in an international circle of writers. The 12th edition's special event is the seminar dedicated to Adam Zagajewski, to which prominent Ukrainian writers such as Ilya Kaminsky, Ilya Kiva and Kateryna Babkina were invited. Another important context was the celebration of Polish Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, the poet Wisława Szymborska, on the 100th anniversary of her birth. Apart from these events, just like every year, the 2023 Miłosz Festival was an occasion for presenting to its audience the most important literary premieres of the year. Among the international guests there were poets from Germany (Jan Wagner, Anja Kampmann, Daniela Danz), Ireland (Theo Dorgan), Latvia (Ingmāra Balode, Kārlis Vērdiņš), Lithuania (Antanas A. Jonynas), Macedionia (Nikola Madžirov), Malta (Antoine Cassar), and USA (Ilya Kaminsky, Mira Rosenthal).