Just Festival 2021

Hidden Letters – Poetry, Precarity and Post-Covid Monuments

Date:

August 18

Time:

06:30 pm - 07:30 pm

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This is an online event

Has the time for a new approach to poetry, politics and economics finally arrived? Join us for a discussion about poetry activism, precarity and post-COVID monuments with Scottish and Bulgarian poets and political scientists Albena Azmanova, Alec Finlay and Nadezhda Radulova.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fault lines not only of the fiscal and economic policies in most industrialized countries, but also in the debate among poets and politicians about the role of the state and culture, the future of work and the search for an alternative beyond the capitalism-socialism dichotomy. How many of these new ideas and poems will persist once the pandemic is over? Has the time for a new approach to poetry, politics and economics finally arrived? Join us for a discussion about poetry activism, precarity and post-COVID monuments with Scottish and Bulgarian poets and political scientists Albena Azmanova, Alec Finlay and Nadezhda Radulova.

Did you know?

You can read Nadezhda Radulova’s specially commissioned poems, presented in their original Cyrillic script and in translation as part of our Hidden Letters trail of poetry alongside the benches-letters in the outdoor grounds of St John’s Church.

The Hidden Letters benches are designed by the Bulgarian artists and architects Cyrill Zlatkov and Ivan Ivanov in the shape of letters from the Cyrillic alphabet offering new outdoor spaces for resting and reading, complete with poems by outstanding Bulgarian writers, including Nadezhda Radoulova.

Hidden Letters first launched in Sofia in 2018 and since has toured to Berlin, Paris, Budapest, Plovdiv, Munster, Rabat and Brussels. Edinburgh is its first UK destination and in the post-COVID-19 pandemic it aims to reclaim our outdoor urban spaces for poetry activism and multiculturalism.

Other Related Events at this year’s Just Festival

Hidden Letters

Provinciality in the Global Village of World Literature?

this event is free, suggested donation £4.

 

Nadezhda Radulova

Date:

August 18

Time:

06:30 pm - 07:30 pm

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Nadezhda RadulovaNadezhda Radulova (b. 1975) is a poet, writer, editor and literary translator. She is the author of six poetry books

– “Tongue-Tied Name”, “Albas”, “Cotton, Glass and Electricity”, “Bandoneon”, “When They Fall Asleep” and “Small World, Big World” – as well as of the children’s book “Wonderful Alphabet” and the research “Literary Palimpsests: Hilda Doolittle, Jean Rhys, Marina Tsvetaeva”. She is the recipient of the national awards for poetry “Ivan Nikolov” and “Nikolay Kanchev”, and the Krastan Dyankov Award for literary translation from English into Bulgarian. Currently, she is lecturer in Translation and Editing at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. Her academic interests are related to the field of Anglo-American modernism, gender studies, and literary adaptation.

Alec Finlay

Date:

August 18

Time:

06:30 pm - 07:30 pm

Book Now

Alec FinlayAlec Finlay (b. 1966) is a poet, publisher and artist based in Edinburgh. In recent years Finlay’s work has been primarily concerned with contemporary visions of nature and landscape.

The range of forms that he has employed is incredibly diverse: neon text; nest-boxes; major interventions working with windmill turbines and public gardens, multiples, paperworks and all forms of print and web-based media; and such innovative poetic forms as the renga, circle poem and mesostic. Recently, Finlay has worked on long term residencies and exhibitions with BALTIC and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and performances for Tramway and Tate Modern, including presentations at ARC Projects Sofia and Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv. Currently, Finlay is undertaking a commission, in collaboration with Lucy Richards and Ken Cockburn, on a national COVID memorial initiated by The Herald and greenspace scotland.