Who are we?

Festival Director: Olga Peková
Organizing Team: Louis Armand, Ondřej Buddeus, Ewelina Chiu, Elizabet Kovačeva, David Vichnar
Media: Ondřej Buddeus, Tereza Novická, Olga Peková
Translators: Teáta Binar, Tereza Novická, Alena Kopečná, Elizabet Kovačeva, Olga Peková, Simona Schröderová, David Vichnar
Photography: Vadim Erent, Ry Hallada

Partners: Vlak Magazine, Psí Víno, Petr Štengl, Equus Press, Litteraria Pragensia Books, Dusie Press, Österreichischer Kulturforum Prag, Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Charles University in Prague

Festival is run thanks to the support of the City of Prague grant programme.

Contact: praguemicrofestival@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PrazskyMicrofestival

The Prague MicroFestival (PMF) 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. PMF’s history dates back to April 2009, when a group of Australian poets (Pam Brown, Phil Hammial, Jill Jones, Mike Farrell) and Irish poets (Trevor Joyce, Maurice Scully) visited Prague thanks to funding from the Australia Council and Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs. Along with UK poet Kevin Noland and a group of local Czech and English-language writers, this combined week-long visit became the first MicroFestival. During the three years since that time, PMF has evolved into a major event on Prague literary scene and the only non-commercial literary festival of its size. Since 2011, PMF has entered into a partnership with the Czech poetry magazine Psí Víno and the publisher Petr Štengl, who has released the first anthology of Czech translations originated with the festival, Polibek s rozvodnou (2012). For more on the history of Prague Microfestival, please visit the sections pertaining to the individual years.

The purpose of the PMF is to provide a forum for poetic exchange, a non-profit alternative to the existing Festival circuit which caters to primarily establishment writers with the inclusion of token Czech authors, and is commercially orientated. The PMF is a non-profit event run by artists, volunteers and students; all events are free of charge and fully bilingual (English/Czech). The focus of PMF is threefold: to present writing that is innovative/experimental; writing that moves across genres and media (visual culture, music, film) and writing that could be broadly defined as “translocal”, that is, writing outside the confines of nationalism, pursuing a broadly cosmopolitan agenda. It aims to introduce new innovative approaches into the Czech milieu, as well as put Prague on the map of experimental world literature, show Prague as a re-ememerging genuinely cosmopolitan centre, whose citizens from all backgrounds and nationalities are contributing to a vital and unique literary culture.

The PMF target audience is anyone with an interest in new writing, in experiment. This year the festival is being co-hosted by the magazines VLAK (in English) and Psí Víno (CZ), and will take place entirely at K4 Student Club, a popular venue for many young Czech people and artists.

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