The government tries to solve on many levels the question of efficient promotion of our country, to little avail. In this context it is bad manners to mention puzzles about Harniunia and Sprytko. However, Bukovyna’s capital Chernivtsi has for the second time held the International Festival of Poetry Meridian Czernowitz, which offered its own version of broadened European cultural space, with Chernivtsi taking a position far from the last, if not a leading one.
“Will Chernivtsi become once a cultural capital of Europe? I think yes. In 2024 Europe’s cultural capital is to be selected in Ukraine, and Chernivtsi stands all chances to become one,” Khrystia VENHRYNIUK, a Chernivtsi poetess and one of the moderators of the festival, made a forecast.
The Meridian Czernowitz festival, which is becoming more popular, may help the city to gain the authoritative title. Whereas last-year event gathered litterateurs from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Ukraine, this year the list of the participants included also guests from Romania, Moldova, Poland, France, Great Britain, Israel, and Russia. For three days Chernivtsi was trying to prove its status of a many-culture open city with a long-time European tradition. The cozy atmosphere of the paved streets, old-age Austrian architecture, where Paul Celan, practically the festival’s patron, Rosa Auslaender, Mihai Eminescu and other distinguished pens used to reside, are simply created to host cultural-artistic events. The poetic image of Chernivtsi forestalls the city itself. The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called it “the city of dead poets.” It would be more desirable if Chernivtsi was the city of living poets as well.
Meridian Czernowitz could become one of the ordinary festivals, be it not for the well-thought organization and efficient management. This time there was none of last year’s chaotic organization.
“The festival is not so big and it cannot be compared by its scale with great literary events, instead we have a clear program, opportune combination of poetry with artistic speeches intertwining with it. There is video poetry, electric poetry, performances, etc.,” Serhii ZHADAN, member of the initiative group of Meridian Czernowitz noted.
An ethnic disco, lectures on sculpture, launches of books, exhibits of art photography, kinetic sculptures, and artistic-poetic collages, musical-theater performances, and a plentiful of poetry – in cafes, in the streets, on walls, ceilings, and floors, and even in the movie theater – each time the audience could choose where they would like to listen to poetry. The Daytime program was gradually turning into the nighttime activities: at 5 a.m. the most enduring listeners saw the dawn with the accompaniment of Electric Poetry, an intellectual alternative to club parties.
Certainly, the event’s trump card is that it featured famous personalities of the contemporary Ukrainian literary space, poets, prose writers, and translators. In particular, those included Yurii Andrukhovych, Serhii Zhadan, Petro Rykhlo, Mark Belorusets, and a great number of foreign authors with renowned names and famous literary projects.
