An interview with Olga Peková, an English and American
Studies student and the head coordinator of the international Prague
Microfestival that brought inspiring personalities of contemporary poetry from
Czech and abroad into the K4 club. (Original interview link: http://ffakt.ukmedia.cz/prazsky-microfestival-festival-zamereny-do-budoucnosti-na-literaturu-ktera-teprv-bude; translated by Jaromír Lelek and Olga Peková)
When and how did Prague Microfestival come about? And
how did you get to working on the festival?
The history of Prague Microfestival (PMF) goes back to the 2004 Prague
International Poetry Festival. Back then, more than 40 writers from all over
the world read their work at an event that lasted a whole week and included
readings in up to three languages: the language of the original, English and
Czech. The festival is more or less forgotten nowadays, but back then it was a
bigger event than the currently well-known Prague Writer’s Festival. Louis
Armand, a writer and a lecturer at the Department of Anglophone Literatures
& Cultures [Note: an interview
with him follows this one!], supervised the creation of the PMF, but thanks to
the ambitious scale of the undertaking it would never happen in the same format
again. Then in 2009 it was resurrected as a festival that has, rather as a form
of precaution, added the word ‘Micro’ to its name. A group of authors from
Ireland, Australia, and other countries gave a series of readings all around
Prague and the translations to Czech were covered by the English and American
Studies students. That was the seed from which in the following years a
full-fledged festival started to bloom again: a year after that it was hosted
in Brno as well and in 2011 it finally settled in the Krásný Ztráty bar, this
time again for admirable five busy days. In the same year the festival
partnered up with the Psí víno magazine and thus sealed its entry at the Czech
literary scene. 2011 is also the year in which I found the way to the festival,
simply as one of the English and American Studies students – my job was to
translate about 8 authors’ work into Czech and I was helping out here and
there. The next year, I took over a large portion of the organising from the
original team of Louis Armand and David Vichnar, a Ph.D. student at the Faculty
of Arts of Charles University, and this year I’ve become a full-time
coordinator or a ‘director’ of the festival.
Who participates in organising the festival?
The team comprises six people. Besides me there’s the aforementioned
Louis Armand, thanks to whose erudition we are able to invite internationally
renowned authors. Next there is David Vichnar, a Ph.D. student, translator and
a long-standing chief of the festival, and Ondřej Buddeus who is our connection
to the Psí víno magazine. I mustn’t forget our kind-hearted colleague, Tereza
Novická, a translator and an announcer, and Elizabeth Kovačeva, a translator
and this year’s coordinator of practical matters like the accommodation of the
guests. Both the girls are English and American Studies students. However, many
others aid in preparing the festival: the K4 club team is a big partner to us
and helps also with organising the festival’s small exhibition. Every year we
approach students of English and American Studies with an offer of poetry
translation jobs, we need a graphic designer, a photographer, a stand seller,
poster distributors, and volunteers of all kinds…
Is it challenging to gather financial sources for an
event like this? Who supports the Microfestival?
The main ingredient has so far obviously been enthusiasm, which of
course can’t be enough on its own. Last year we founded a non-profit
organisation for running the festival and we succeeded in obtaining a scarce
yet very helpful subsidy from the City of Prague Council. Also we approach
individual cultural institutions and embassies that, however, operate on very
limited budgets themselves. Getting the money is hard and the PMF has a
difficult position for several reasons. The first one is the ubiquitous cuts in
support for cultural activities which doesn’t concern only foreign
institutions, but, to an even greater extent, the local ones as well.
The second reason is that our festival is still a relatively young
institution; with the fifth year just finished we still are in the shadow of
the older and well-established institutions like the Prague Writer’s Festival
or the Book World which land all the ‘juicy’ grants only by the weight of their
names. It will probably take some time before we’ll be able to convince the
institutions that the PMF is a special and distinct event that deserves
financial support and that has a potential that ought to be reckoned with. If
that would happen Microfestival could become an international Prague festival
looking towards the future; looking towards literature to be, which still,
perhaps, remains partly unknown in these parts and therefore inspirational for
the local artists. However, if the finances were to be constantly low, or if
the festival was to be stumbling somewhere on the margins of its potential, it
is equally possible that in a few years it will cease to exist. Anyway, the
people who are supporting the festival a lot right now are those who just
attend it, talk about it, and write about it.
Compared with the previous years, how demanding was it
this year to set up the festival? How long before the event itself do you begin
with your preparations and what are the necessary steps?
We’re taking the same steps as any other bigger cultural event – we file
grant applications and approach institutions on the one hand, and, on the
other, we search for authors and accompanying artists (painters and musicians)
whom we approach and provided they are interested collaborate with past the
event. That includes taking care of the accommodation and travel cost
reimbursements and, simultaneously with that, the time and the venue of the
festival has to be arranged. When all this is settled, we seek out and
coordinate translators, photographers, sponsors, commission the graphics, and
start putting the programme together. During the days of the festival itself
there are a lot of details to be taken care of: introducing the authors and
translators, or recording the readings. Right after the festival the book stand
has to be cleared away, bills have to be accounted for, and some of the
translations go into print during the summer and autumn, hence they have to be
edited and so we stay in touch with the authors and translators… This year the
grant applications deadlines changed, but last year we had to fill in a big
grant application in September and then a smaller one in the autumn. The ideal
time for approaching the authors is perhaps already in December, because by
mid-February the communication has to be on the level of particulars. Since then
on the organisers are being flooded with a stable stream of tasks; among all
this the event itself is sort of the tip of the iceberg.
Moreover, throughout the whole year the festival has to be promoted
unrelentingly. After the fashion of the Nordic festival Audiatur we would like
to publish an annual anthology of the festival translations when the event is
over. So the workload is actually spread throughout the whole year. Partly for
that reason, the festival is a bit smaller this year: as a matter of fact it
has shrunk from five nights to three, the fourth is being organised together
with the Svět knihy, which is a great relief.
What were the highlights of the 2013 Prague
Microfestival? Looking back, was it a successful event?
This year’s centrepiece was the performance of the American poet based
in Paris who has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Alice Notley, who gave
a reading at the opening night, on Sunday the 12th of May. We were also
thrilled to host the Norwegian Conceptualist Paal Bjelke Andersen. And both the
artists also performed and gave lectures outside the festival venue: on the
grounds of the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University and in the
TranzitDisplay gallery. As regards the Central Europe artists we saw the recent
finalist of the Jindřich Chalupecký prize, Aleš Čermák, and the Slovak duo,
Zuzana Husárová and Amalia Roxana Filip, that performs with its intermedia
project Liminal. However, I would have to praise absolutely everyone. Besides
that a wonderful musical accompaniment was secured: Ondřej Galuška, Ondřej
Štveráček, Michel Delvielle with his homage to Frank Zappa, or Ken Nash. On the
15th of May foreign authors that have been living in Prague for a long time
were performing. In fact I think the festival has come together quite nicely
this year and we were thrilled to see everyone happy.
Olga Peková currently takes a Master’s degree in Critical and Cultural Theory at
the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures of the Faculty of Arts at
the Charles University in Prague. Three years ago she got involved in
organising the poetry festival Prague Microfestival, which she runs this year.
Also, she is an editor at the Psí vino magazine and occasionally assists at the
Litteraria Pragensia Books and Equus Press publishing houses. She has published
translations of current Anglophone Literature and her own work. She is
interested in contemporary poetry.
