Days of Poetry and Wine Festival

The Days of Poetry and Wine Medana is a festival that hosts the younger generation of poets from all over the world. It takes place in Medana (a village in Goriška Brda next to the Italian border) during the last week in August, basically turning the village into the poetry capital of Europe for a week.

The festival was initiated in 1995 by the Študentska založba Publishing House, Ljubljana. Recently it has expanded to offer more than just poetry and wine: featuring numerous concerts, a selection of recent Slovene films, contemporary dance performances, street theatre, visual and spatial interventions, a programme for children ... Among its goals are to examine intersections between poetry and other art forms and to provide an opportunity for discussions between authors and local and international publishers on different topics.

The festival has also seen some notable guests: in 2009 it was attended by Rumen Leonidov from Bulgaria and Durs Grünbein from Germany. In 2008 the other poets were joined by Lars Gustafsson from Sweden and Paul Muldoon from Ireland (all of which are regarded as modern poetry classics). Študentska založba also took this opportunity to publish collections of their poetry.

Before the official start of each year's festival in Medana, the participating poets take part in an event named Medana before Medana and present their work in other towns all over Slovenia. In 2009 poetry readings were held in Ljubljana, Ptuj, Padna, Vrba, Volče, and Krško.

A comprehensive multilingual volume of the participants' poetry and a special festival bottling of vintage wines accompanies each festival. The poems are presented on the festival website.

The event has had many sponsors in recent years, including Študentska založba Publishing House, the Brda Community, the Ministry of Culture of Slovenia and winegrowers from Medana. In 2003 it was one of five Slovene projects that received a grant within the Culture 2000 programme of the European Commission.

A genuine contact is established between the locals and their guests, as full board and private lodging is provided for all guest poets of the festival, along with the expenses relating to the programme (the invited participants are expected to cover only travel expenses to Ljubljana).

External links

Days of Poetry and Wine Festival

See also

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