Poetry Days in Poland

As part of the Poets of Today – Voices of Tomorrow project, Poetry Days were held in 11 schools in the Silesian Voivodeship.

The enormous involvement of both teachers, school communities, and poets in the preparation and implementation of these meetings with young people should be emphasised – in each school, the Poetry Day turned into a Poetry Festival, showing how necessary such an initiative is. Most of the meetings took place within the walls of the school, but in two cases it was decided to ‘go beyond’ the school premises – to Memorial Park or the headquarters of the City of Gardens.

The formats and programmes of the meetings were agreed between the poets and the teachers individually and also varied greatly. Most often the meetings included a part organised with a larger number of students, e.g. in the auditorium in the form of a lecture, talk, series of questions, but always with poetry reading and discussion and then more individual sessions in smaller groups (organised in classrooms or in the library).

The value of these meetings was undoubtedly the face-to-face discussions about the interpretation, emphasis and intention of the poems, their emotional overtones, and the demonstration of different forms of poetry creation (e.g. recycled poetry).

Each school found a group (sometimes quite large) of students willing to share their poetry attempts (often in an ‘open mic’ convention). This was undoubtedly due to the great atmosphere and the shortening of the distance between poets and young people. Several schools provided prizes, presented by the poet, for the students’ best poems – often these were books of poetry, difficult to obtain in the classic bookshop circuits.

Creating their own poems was an interesting experience for the pupils – for all of them it was an unusual adventure, e.g. trying to create a collage poem from materials found in everyday life: fragments of school newspapers, texts seen on doors in the school corridor or clippings from the instruction manual of a fire extinguisher or how to wash your hands, but also trying to write poems in the traditional way on pieces of paper or on phones. One poet offered a workshop using books of poetry by contemporary male and female poets in a ‘blackout poetry’ convention, provoking action and commenting on both the texts and their feelings.

In several schools, the work with the poets‘ poems resulted in exhibitions of visual interpretations prepared by students based on excerpts from the poets’ poems, e.g. exhibitions of photographs, images generated by artificial intelligence, drawings, cartoons, graphics, paintings, etc. Some schools also prepared commemorative publications (a photo album based on the poet’s poems) or mini-publications of pupils’ poems. An important element of the meetings was the interpenetration of the arts and the relationship between poetry and other creative fields – for example, in one school the poet talked about the influences between photography or visual arts and poetry.

In several schools, Poetry Day was combined with an artistic and literary programme, during which students recited excerpts from poems, presented interpretations of musical pieces, but also dramas or short prose excerpts. This often led to an inspiring discussion with the poets on how – and through which other readings – the pupils read the poems of the poet.

The young people also prepared other forms of presentation as part of the discussion on contemporary poetry, e.g. in one school there was a short ‘Oxford’ debate on the topic: ‘Poetry – snobbery or boredom?’.

Reading, in addition to their own poetry, the work of other contemporary poets not only broadened the students’ knowledge, but showed the multitude of formats used in contemporary poetry. The references to other poets’ poems were extremely important – allowing for a broader context and showing the variety of contemporary poetic forms. It was also extremely important to talk about one’s work in the context of one’s own inspirations, important moments, personal experiences, readings, passions (e.g. sports).

In addition to the poets, each school’s Poetry Day was attended by Małgorzata Lebda (lead poet) or Weronika Murek (playwright). Rafał Siderski, as visual artist, and Wenancjusz Ochmann, as vocal coach, also supported their realisation.

We would like to thank the wonderful teachers from the schools involved in the project: I Uniwersytecki Liceum Ogólnokształcące from Chorzów, Liceum Plastyczne in ZS nr 18 from Zabrze, Liceum Techniczne from Lędziny, Liceum Techniczne from Ruda Śląska, V Liceum Ogólnokształcące z Oddziałami dwuujęzycznymi from Gliwice, Akademickie Liceum Ogólnokształcące from Gliwice, III Secondary School with Bilingual Branches from Gliwice, II Secondary School with Bilingual Branches from Katowice, I Secondary School with Bilingual Branches from Siemianowice Śląskie, Filomata Secondary School from Gliwice, and a Primary School from Gliwice.