PMF 2012 /eng

PMF 2012 took place from May 12th to May 16th, 2012 in the student club K4, Celetna 20. It featured over 30 participants from more than 8 countries, 5 bands and an art exhibition.

The archive of PMF 2012 is accessible under the following link: http://praguemicrofestival.wordpress.com/.
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David Vichnar and Tereza Novická in their article from April 2012 invited the audience with these words:

Prague Micro-festival: a medley of bilingual poetry, volume 4

This year’s Prague Micro-festival will take place from May 12th to May 16th, 2012 in Prague. This noncommercial and fully bilingual festival features mainly Czech and English poetry. Being held only for the fourth time, the festival has a rich history regardless.
The festival came about in an effort to resuscitate the Prague International Poetry Festival, which took place in 2004, a major undertaking on the scale of the Prague Writers’ Festival, with over 40 writers participating from over 20 countries (including Charles Bernstein, Andrej Soznovsky, Tomaz Salamun, Drew Milne, Jaroslav Rudis, Sudeep Sen, Anselm Hollo). Unlike the annual Writers’ Festival, the Prague International Poetry Festival was integrated into the local culture, with events in established local reading venues, with the aim of fostering dialogue among writers and audience members.
Just like in its beginnings in 2009, this year’s PMF is being held with the aim of providing a platform of communication for poets who work outside the scope of already existing, predominantly commercially-oriented literary institutions. The PMF is organized by writers of the Prague literary scene themselves along with students and enthusiasts. The PMF focus lies on new writing that is innovative and conscious of being outside the literary establishment defined by the Anglo-American publishing industry. It connects the best of local Anglophone writers with poets and prose writers from across the Czech Republic and abroad. The focus lies in deepening relations between European hubs of contemporary Anglophone poetry, being instrumental in the renaissance of Prague foreign language poetry, bringing to Prague contemporary international literary production and giving deserved attention to those who are often unfairly overlooked because of their “inter-language” stance and stance between audiences, traditions and poetics. Additionally, the festival strives to deepening the discussion about “trans-local” literature – this newly coined concept encompasses writing outside the confines of nationalism, pursuing a broadly cosmopolitan “agenda.”
The PMF target audience is anyone with an interest in new writing. The festival will take place from May 12th to May 16th, 2012 in the student club K4 (Celetná 20) and each evening will be concluded by a live musical performance – all this is free of charge. There will be the launch of last year’s festival Polibek s rozvodnou anthology, which is coming out just now under Petr Štengl press. Apart from translations of seventeen writers, some of whom will perform at the festival this year, the anthology includes David Vichnar’s afterword on the topic of trans-local literature.
The PMF 2012 program is ample and includes a whole range of events: it will start off Saturday with the book launch of Cartographies of the In-Between by Peter Cockelbergh and the reading of Pierre Joris, a French poet, translator and the PEN prize winner, whose poetry is what Cartographies concerns itself with. Saturday will feature the British band Alabama Crack House Experience with their improvised performance and Australian poets living in Europe Sam Langer and Joel Scott.
This year, the festival will be unique in bringing about the interlacing of poetry and electronic music in the projects of Polish poet Zofie Baldyga Electrolyrics and laptopper Pawel Uszynský, which you will able to experience on Saturday as well. The following days will feature Vlado Šimka’s performance accompanied by DJ Herzog Herzog, Ondřej Buddeus’ performance accompanied by electric guitar and the noise formation No Pavarotti.
A presentation of our partner magazine Psí Víno will take place as well as a wide range of Czech writers (Jaromír Typlt, who will also screen a short poetic film, Pavel Novotný, Josef Straka, Ondřej Zajac) and Slovakian authors (Michal Rehúš from magazine Kloaka, Vlado Šimek).
Guests can look forward to the participation of Prague anglophone writerss such as Louis Armand and Joshua Mensch and musicians like Flanna Sheridan, Ken Nash, Phil Shoenfeld or band Turpentine Ray. From Berlin we will be able welcome poets Donna Stonecipher, Catherine Hales and Alistair Noon and from Switzerland language poet Susana Gardner who runs the Dusie Press. Writers connected with the VEER press based in London (Stephen Mooney, Ulli Freer, William Rowe, Holly Pester, Becky Cremin and Jeff Hilson) will present their work.
For the first time, the festival will feature an exhibition as well – the authors of the visual form of the book project “Cut me up!” (which will comprise the installation) are Pavel Frič, Martin Raudenský, Lukáš Miller, Michaela Labudová, Nikola Hoření, Barbora Kicovová and Jakub Hrdlička. They will be joined by young artist Petr Košárek and photographer Vadim Erent.
PMF stems from the belief that a kind of momentum has been gathering over the last several years, with new writing emerging on the Prague scene and audiences taking notice. Prague is re-emerging as a genuinely cosmopolitan centre, whose citizens from all backgrounds and nationalities are contributing to a vital and unique literary scene. It is this scene that the festival strives to support with its efforts. You can find further information and the up-to-date program on http://www.praguemicrofestival.com.