Belarusian Collegium presents: round table “Contemporary Literature: The Relevance of the Classics”

On Saturday, 13 February, from 12:00 to 13:30, as part of the 5th international poetry festival in memory of Michas Straltsou, “Poems on the Asphalt,” the Petrus Brouka Literary Museum (30 K.

Marx Street) will host the round table “Contemporary Literature: The Relevance of the Classics.”

Today literature is clearly losing the important place it occupied in previous eras.

This raises the main questions for discussion: can authors of the past say anything significant to contemporary society?

Is knowledge of literary classics necessary for an educated person today?

What is the role of classical literature in the contemporary cultural and information space?

Participants: Valiantsin Akudovich, Ihar Babkou, Siarhei Dubavets, Bogdan Zadura (Poland), Andrei Khadanovich and Liuba Yakimchuk (Ukraine).

Moderator: Iryna Dubianetskaya.

The annual Michas Straltsou International Poetry Festival “Poems on the Asphalt” was launched in 2012 by the NGO “Union of Belarusian Writers” (http://lit-bel.org/) and the Belarusian PEN Centre (http://pen-centre.by).

In different years, poets from Belarus, Germany, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia have taken part in the festival.

The festival’s traditional events include a poetry slam, literary readings, discussions, book and book-series presentations, musical performances, and so on.

For the second time, the Belarusian Collegium is organizing a public discussion of pressing literary issues within the framework of the “Poems on the Asphalt” festival.

The full festival program can be viewed here (http://lit-bel.org/by/news/6577.html).