Versopolis Podcast #35: Building community through the poetization of the world

Nina Medved is the founder of Dve luni (Two Moons), an institute whose mission is the poetization of the world. Through its work, she mentors young, middle-aged and elderly participants, fostering playfulness through poetry and a wide range of workshops. A firm believer that good things take time, and opposed to the rat race of overproduction, she maintains that the creation of community through ‘third places,’ which her institute enables, is just as – if not more – important than the poetry created in the workshops.

In addition to her mentorship work, Nina is an award-winning poet. She won the Urška Young Literature Festival (2019), and her debut poetry collection, Drseči svet (2020), was nominated for Best Debut at the Slovenian Book Fair and presented at the Pranger Festival.

She also helped establish the Slovenian slam poetry movement, served as the first leader of the Poetry Society Slam Zverine, and co-organized the European Slam Poetry Championship (2020). We talked about her work across an unusually wide age range, reflected on first encounters with contemporary poetry, and discussed the strategies she uses to create safe spaces for reading and writing. Finally, we explored the vision behind Dve luni and how mentorship, workshops and conscious knowledge transfer aim to poetize the world.

Nina Medved is a poet, translator and photographer dedicated to the care of words and light. She graduated in Comparative Literature and French from the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana and lives and works in Maribor. As the winner of the Urška Young Literature Festival (2019), she published her debut poetry book Drseči svet (2020), nominated for the best debut at the Slovenian Book Fair and presented at the Pranger Festival. Her second collection Rodna doba was published in 2024. Her poetry and translations from French have been published at home and abroad. She co-creates numerous literary projects, runs the Dve luni institute and makes a significant mark on Slovenian slam poetry. In 2021, she received the Pont charter.