Poetry Expo 25
/ 22 February 2025
Open Letter to Europe by Jacek Dehnel
Days of Poetry and Wine
Poetry Expo 25
In 2017 Days of Poetry and Wine festival has launched a programme called Open Letter to Europe. Since then, the art director of the festival, with their team each year selects a preeminent poet or thinker and give her or him an opportunity to address Europe and shine a spotlight on the problems they consider the most pressing. The aim is to bring the language of art, thought-out, precise and rigorous, back to public discourse.
The first Open Letter to Europe was written by Flemish author Stefan Hertmans, the second in 2018 by Swedish poet of Iranian descent Athena Farrokhzad, in 2019 by German cosmopolitan, writer of Bulgarian descent Ilija Trojanow, in 2020 by one of the most popular Hungarian authors Krisztina Tóth, and in 2021 one of the most prominent names of German poetry Durs Grűnbein. In 2022, it was written by Galician poet and activist Chus Pato, in 2023 it was written by English poet David Harsent. In 2024, the Open Letter to Europe will be written by Polish poet, writer and translator Jacek Dehnel.
All Open Letters to Europe are translated to several languages and published at www.stihoteka.com and as separate publication. They are delivered to all Members of the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, and the European Commission. Furthermore, they are published by major national and international media, such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany), Oslobodenje (Bosnia and Herzegovina), the WMagazine (Spain), the London Review of Books (UK), Knack (Belgium), Biblioteka Analiz (Poland), Hungarian Literature Online (Hungary), Express (Croatia), Delo (Slovenia), Večer (Slovenia), STA (Slovenia) ..., and thus carry significant weight throughout Europe.
Read Jacek Dehnel's letter below:
Author
Days of Poetry and Wine
Days of Poetry and Wine is one of the largest and most recognizable international poetry festivals in this part of Europe. Every year in the last warm August days festival hosts over twenty poets from all over the world along with selected domestic winemakers. The main emphasis - poetry and wine - is accompanied by a thoughtfully made programme in the field of music, visual, photography, film and other arts for all ages and interests.
After 27 editions of the festival with 750 poets, more than 650 concerts, performances, installations and other events, and thousands of visitors who have had the opportunity to enjoy the unique atmosphere of Days of Poetry and Wine festival we can all agree – it is a fabulous event not to be missed.
This year, the festival will take place from 19 to 24 August in Ptuj and 18 other cities in Slovenia and abroad.
Find out more about the festival on https://www.versoteque.com/
Author
Jacek Dehnel
Jacek Dehnel (born 1980 in Gdańsk, Poland) is a Polish poet, writer, translator and painter. His first collection of poems was the last book recommended by the Polish Nobel Prize winner, Czesław Miłosz. A prolific autor of nine books of poems, five novels, a few collections of short proses, columns and essays, Dehnel has also translated works of (among others) Philip Larkin, Henry James, Edmund White, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, J.M. Coetzee, Charles Dickens and William Faulkner. His own works were translated into over a dozen of languages – in English are available his two novels („Saturn”, Dedalus Books, 2013, and „Lala”, Oneworld, 2018, by Antonia Lloyd-Jones), a selection of poems „Aperture” (Zephyr Press, 2018, by Karen Kovacik), awarded Honorary Mention of the PEN America Poetry in Translation award. Dehnel has been awarded literary prizes that include the Kościelski Award and the Paszport „Polityki” and nominated to many other. Since 2020 he and his husband live in Berlin.
