our latest test copy of OFF_ANTHOLOGIA stolen again…
first film ready to burn and ship (see trailer on Home page)…
I’m off to visit Zeszyty Poetyckie in Gniezno…
Travel with Pawel Gawronski (see foto right) and his guitar…
Filming, translating, seeing the other side of the Grey Zone – the fields, the seas, the mountains…
See you back here in two weeks time – OFF_Marek
Today is the 21st of April. One month until the opening of the FESTA FATUORUM festival in Gniezno. Over 140 poets have already sent in work for the competition which closes on the 1st of May. More is to come.
The jurors from Zeszyty Poetyckie will then then have seven days in which to choose the list of finalists. On the 7th of May, they will send me the best 20-30 entries. They will also invite the short-listed poets to be at the FESTA FATUORUM festival in Gniezno, opening on the 21st of May, where the ultimate winner will be announced.
On the 8th of May, I will set off on a two week journey around Poland (plane tickets already booked). Just me, my video camera and a bag of poems. As I travel around, I will film everything I see and translate the poems. I will also try and visit as many Polish poets as I can.
Muses willing, I will arrive in Gniezno for the opening of FESTA FATUORUM, where I will film the festival, interview the poets I will have been translating, then head back to London to edit the film and finalise the translations.
The translations will then appear in two separate volumes of poetry – the collected anthology of 20-30 poets (3-5 poems each) and the winning poet’s own individual collection. The film of my trip of discovery will then be given away free on DVD with every copy of the two books (which will be available separately or as a twin set).
marek kazmierski, OFF_PRESS londyn
Kiedy Polska weszła do Unii, wszyscy, zdawałoby się, myśleli tylko o tym ile rąk do pracy wyemigrowało m.in. na Wyspy Brytyjskie. Dzisiaj okazuje się, że ci, którzy wyjechali, to nie tylko bezwolni „fizyczni” do pracy na budowach, ale także tacy, którzy w warunkach emigracyjnych chcą stworzyć, ba, tworzą nową literaturę. Czy Polska to widzi? Niech Polska popatrzy.
OFF_Wywiad by Justyna Daniluk, dzis opublikowany w Zeszytach Poetyckich – kliknij na foto by czytac do konca…
Kinoteka Film Festival, 2010, triple film review
Let’s start this piece of vicious writing on a positive note. Nothing screened this year could be anywhere near as dire as Andrzej Wajda’s 2007 “Katyn”. I saw it in London last year, rooted to my cinema seat by the sheer awfulness of what I was witnessing – the dead-icon imagery, the sub-soap opera dialogue, the giant waste of the best acting talent Poland has to offer, the paper thin characters, the plot schisms, the editing mess… a few said it was good for Polish school kids to go see some of the history which communists had hidden for several generations, but school kids want their history strong and vital, not dumbed down and deathly dull.
It’s interesting to note none of the delighted reviews in the Guardian or Times or other high-brow publications actually talked about the film – they all focused on Wajda’s losing his own father in Katyn and about the moving theme of the story. Think I’m being insensitive and wickedly arrogant? Be honest, which is more important to you: what’s on at your local cinema today or what battles are being fought in the name of freedom, even as we speak? I sympathise with Wajda’s loss (both of my grandfathers had spent time in Nazi camps, though both survived), but films must be judged on merit and not personal feelings – if you are going to tackle big themes in your work, especially if it is reaching millions of impressionable hearts and minds, serve them well.
PIOTR SIWECKI: OFF_PRESS origins…
MAREK KAŹMIERSKI: Like so many memorable things in the world, OFF_ was born of bad blood. Marcin Piniak and myself (Marcin writing in Polish, I in English) met writing for Nowy Czas, a newspaper printed in London which had ambitions of being the highbrow choice for the emigre Polish community in the UK. Too bad it didn’t happen. We both quit the paper and kept on drinking, moaning, dreaming. But that gets tiresome after a while, so this time last year Marcin, Kinga Pilich (a young publishing student) and myself set up OFF_Magazine, an on-line bilingual literary journal. It was meant to tell as many stories in as many languages (literal, visual, multi-sensory) as we could find, but such big nets are hard to handle. We got submissions from all over the world, some great stuff, some worse than woeful. Then we decided to run an international writing competition, then publish an anthology of the short-listed writers, then make a film to go with it, then run some literary events to publicise the whole shebang… Read the rest of this entry »
poetry review by Marek Kazmierski
If you don’t already know about Melissa Mann – read about her here – regular visitors to these e-pages should, so I won’t labour the introduction. Her latest collection of poems, Baby I’m Ready To Go, has recently been published by Grievous Jones Press. It’s founder David Oprava has gone on record as saying “The Beats are dead and no one has stepped up”. Big words from a big man, who opened the recent launch of the first three Grevious Jones titles at the Betsey Trotwood talking about “voices which needed to be heard” and all that visionary propaganda I do not want to hear but see from publishers (especially those who print and bind their own writing). Readings from the three GJ authors on offer that night proved to be a wonderfully mixed bag;
– panicked laughter racing through confessionals of rape and personal rebellion
– dull rendering of misogynistic ramblings which should never have troubled ink to page
– perfectly introduced, almost perfectly formed poems of love and its multi-layered lessons
read more here…
National Self-Harming
Sometimes, when writing about Poland, I find myself crying. When the tears come, my first reaction is to check myself for self-pity. Am I getting sentimental? Is it automatic need? Everyone needs a good sob now and then. Or is it the overwhelming power of my own prose that has me crying with joy?
Ignoring the comedy value of that last sentence, the answer is far from funny. Poland, it seems to me, has been raped by history. I know this is a dangerous, discomforting statement, and I’ll be contradicting it soon enough, but first let me elaborate.
Read the rest of this entry »