Prima Vista will also host a poetry programme of observatories supported by Creative Europe

Tartu International Literary Festival Prima Vista will take place in 2023 from 8 to 13 May. The theme of the festival, which celebrates its twentieth birthday, is "To Wish the Impossible" and patronized by the writer Mehis Heinsaar.With a selection of themes, the festival invites reflection, among other things, on the role of imagination and the ability to imagine and depict things that seem to be in the horizon of familiarity and feasibility on the other side, especially in this era of crises and conflicts. If you only want what is possible and feasible – if you only want what can already be obtained one way or another – then the imagination will not be enriched and nothing new, different, different will arise in the world. Literature, on the other hand, is precisely the real real place of wishing for the impossible, of thinking about the impossible, of imagining the impossible. The impossible can appear here in countless different shapes – from a thorough look at the better world to the strangeness embodied in the smallest image, which refreshes the spirit and enriches the soul.

Mehis Heinsaar was inspired to speak the theme of the festival through the mouth of someone distant and unknown: "I am delighted to be this distant guest among you. And all I want to say is this: to listen to the lonely longing in himself who dreams of the impossible. For it is the ultimate subtlety of matter itself, which only a living, oscillating, doubting, suffering, imperfect, aching, transforming, and at the same time dreaming of an ever-thin empire of love can create. Every billionth of a second that a person devotes to dreaming of beauty, peace, and love forms a billion invisible but unbreakable building blocks for this subway between the two — the summoner and the hearer — from which a train racing at supersonic speeds instantly rushes through light years from one galaxy to another." The festival welcomes writers, critics and translators from all over Estonia and the rest of the world, offering events for children, young people and adults alike, partly in a form that has already become familiar, partly by searching, experimenting and wishing for the impossible.

Foreign guests include Jenny Erpenbeck from Germany and Hans Platzgumer from Austria, as well as Icelandic poet Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir. Some old acquaintances who have performed here before or been in residency will also return to Tartu for the duration of the festival, such as the English poet Andy Willoughby, the Scottish poetess Penny Boxall and Philip Meersman from Belgium. Poets Anna Belkovska and Lote Vilma Vītiņa from Latvia and Gina Viliūnė from Lithuania are coming to the festival. The festival's Russian literature programme focuses on authors writing in Russian who have been living in European countries for many years, linor Goralik, a well-known poet, essayist and translator, comes to Tartu from Israel and presents his literary project ROAR (Russian Oppositional Arts Review) at the festival. In the center of Tartu, the Utopia Embassy opens its doors during the festival, where various meetings, discussions, round and oval tables, presentations, lectures, ceremonies and creatures are crowned with a reception every evening, where writers from different countries introduce their utopias, among the participating writers are Hans Platzgumer (Austria), Mehis Heinsaar (Estonia), Cloud Circuit (Canada) and others. The Utopia Embassy is one of the preliminary events of the Prima Vista 2024 "Better and Worse Futures" literary festival, the main programme event of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024.

In cooperation with the science centre AHHAA, Prima Vista also hosts a poetry programme of observatories supported by Creative Europe, in which cultural and scientific institutions from Estonia, Finland, Belgium, Poland, Austria and Spain participate. This collaboration brings together poets from Estonia, Lithuania, Belgium and Italy to the festival.

As preliminary events, the annual fiction periodicals debut competition "The First Step" will be held in March in cooperation between Prima Vista and the Tartu Cultural Endowment, and on April 23, all literary enthusiasts are invited to the Book and Rose Day.6. Mail is Paide Day, a partner city of Prima Vista. There will be a book fair, book presentations, exhibitions, literary cafes and a creative evening. Mari-Liis Müürsepp, the master of the Estonian Poetry Festival 2022, will perform. The Wittenstein Museum of Activity, Wabakohvik, PAMT, Järvamaa Central Library and others help to enrich the imagination. More information about the programme and the performers will be published on the festival website starting from March 2023.Website: https://kirjandusfestival.tartu.ee/

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Photo: Uku Peterson