Poets in Ukraine celebrated like stars
Author Birgit Goertz / sst
Editor Samantha Early
From Deutsche Welle. 23.10.2013
Poetry News
'Poetry has mostly been regarded as something for literature connoisseurs. But it's always been a different story in Eastern Europe. There, people celebrate their poets like pop stars.'
' "I'm a pop star here," 26-year old poet Max Czollek said, referring to the Ukrainian town of Chernivtsi, close to the Romanian border. The young man from Berlin spent two months in the town on an international scholarship for poets. Lyric aficionados know Chernivtsi as the birthplace of German-language poets
such as Paul Celan and Rose Ausländer.
"Poetry is something that's much more celebrated here. The audience is quite
young," German poet Czollek said. He's here on behalf of the initiators of the 4th International Poetry Festival Meridian Czernowitz, which took place in September. Spending time in Ukraine taught Czollek a lot about how Germans and Ukrainians differ in their approach to poetry.
Whether they are young or old, Ukrainian poetry fans all know the names of the country's renowned poets such as Yuri Andrukhovych and Serhiy Zhadan, or upcoming poets like Andrij Ljubka.
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"If I mention 'I'm doing something with Ljubka' even people who are not involved with literature at all say 'Wow, Andrij Ljubka, that's great!' That would never happen in Germany," Czollek said.
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