Now, there is no need to go to a book store or to a literary night in order to get to know the works of modern poets. All you need is to stop for a moment on the subway because recently in Ukraine there has been launched the project “Euro Poems.” The project involved 12 Ukrainian and 12 Polish poets, including Yurii Andrukhovych, Dmytro Lazutkin, Serhii Zhadan, Ostap Slyvynsky, Marianna Kyianovska, Kateryna Babkina, Andrzej Stasiuk, Dariusz Suska, Joanna Mueller, and others. Poems of these authors both in Ukrainian and in English are printed on platforms of the subway stations Poshtova Ploshcha and Politekhnichny Instytut in Kyiv. The project will take place in Kyiv and in other host cities of Euro-2012: Kharkiv, Lviv, and Donetsk. This is not the first time something like this is taking place in Ukraine: last year works of Polish authors were made known to Ukrainian public in a similar way. Each author had to present only one poem.
“I chose one of my old poems which I like very much. I would like people to distract from their everyday routine for at least 10-20 minutes and get the taste of art. This might make them kinder. I once said that a poem read in a day reduces crams on subway,” said Pavlo Korobchuk, participant of the project.
The launch of the project took place in a form of recital of poems by the authors on the platforms of the metro stations. Soon there appeared first readers. Passengers who were present on the platform during that time said they were pleased with the initiative, although, some admitted that they do not fully understood the poems, and one of the passengers even began to recite his own poems.
“This is a fantastic idea,” said Dmytro Lazutkin. “There are people who don’t read poetry, they are not interested in it and would not go to a bookstore to search for it. But here it came to them. People always have a few minutes between the trains and they can choose whether to read commercials or poems. I know that most of the authors presented here are a worthy choice. It would be nice if poems were printed not only on platforms, but also in the trains. Such projects have already been held in Warsaw, London, and it is great that now we will have it in Kyiv.”
