Project summary

The Poems in Veszprém (VEVE) project is implemented within the framework of the 2023 Veszprém-Balaton European Capital of Culture program. The aim of VEVE is to popularize and make poetry more accessible to everyone, to integrate the world of poems into everyday life. During the series of
programs, we want to introduce the Translation House to the region and the entire country, and even spread its reputation beyond the borders.

The first poet-in-residence phase of the VeVe project in April went beyond our expectations. Our six invited poets of European stature (Yvonne Reddick, UK; Iya Kiva, Ukraine; Gérard Cartier, France; Antonio Rivero Taravillo, Spain; Jaan Malin, Estonia and Guy Helminger, Luxembourg) made up an excellent group and, when not working on their poetry, there were active discussions in the Translation House in English, French, Spanish, German and even occasionally Russian and Italian.

Two public programmes were organised during the poets' two-week stay:

At Pannon University we discussed poetry and literature, we held a literary roundtable discussion on poetry and literature with our invited poets about their work and poetry in general. The event was co-hosted by Dorottya Szávai, associate professor of literature,
Pannon University.

After reading one or two of their poems, the poets briefly explained how and why they became poets and talked about their role models and their poetics. The questions posed by the moderators and the audience led to a very interesting discussion about trends in contemporary poetry, including the concepts of sound poetry and eco-poetry.

A the House of Jewish Excellence in Balatonfüred we discussed our common European affairs. With our invited poets and translators, we had a roundtable on their view on European issues: how intellectuals from very different parts of Europe see the current situation of the continent, what are key values and jeopardies, what’s the role of culture and literature.

Four of the six poets were from EU member states (three of them founding members). Yvonne gave a very interesting account of the failure of Brexit, including new perspectives. Iya, as a Ukrainian poet, spoke naturally about the horrors of the Ukrainian-Russian war, from a perspective that is of course completely new to the Hungarian audience. The poets also read out one of their poems on European values. The feedback from the audience was that the discussion was not only very enlightening in terms of content, but also because the participants debated things on which they disagreed with each other, openly and curiously, with a view to compromise.

In addition, we considered it particularly important that our guests gave special language and literature classes in the region's secondary schools. According to the original programme, we took our guests to the Lajos Lóczy Secondary School in Balatonfüred, the Kéttannyelvű Secondary School in Balatonalmádi and the Lovassy Secondary School in Veszprém. The classes were so successful that our French and German poets were invited back to Lóczy for a session, and when the Vetési Albert Secondary School in Veszprém heard about our project, we received an invitation from the Spanish teacher to have Antonio give a class there as well. As a typical episode, we would like to mention that when it turned out that French was not taught at Kéttannyelvű, Gérard did not hesitate to perform his workshop in Italian to the students of Italian language. All in all, we managed to reach hundreds of secondary school students.

We asked our invited poets to write poems inspired by their experiences here, which we could later translate and perform in a poetry performance. We also organised a cruise on Lake Balaton and two one-day excursions (to the Bakony and the Balaton Highlands) to inspire and familiarise ourselves with the region, and a sightseeing tour before the programme in Veszprém.

As the second phase of the project during the month of May, we received the poems inspired by the poets' experiences in the region (we asked for one from each of them, but more had be written), which - together with the previously translated poems (https://furedifordito.wixsite.com/veve/versek) – were performed by students of theatre on 29th and 30th July in the form of street theatre in Balatonalmádi, Balatonfüred, and Veszprém. The performances were different in each venue, with different poems: six actors and director Dorka Porogi created three different poetry performances from poems of our invited poets translated into Hungarian. The performances were "Bathing in Poetry" (poems by Antonio Rivero Taravillo and Guy Helminger), "If the Word Fails You" (poems by Jaan Malin and Yvonne Reddick) and "The Teeth of History Books" (poems by Gérard Cartier and Iya Kiva).

On the beach of Balatonalmádi, the "stage" and the base were the library's pavilion. (This occasional contact with them promises to be a lasting one: after the performance they indicated that they would be very happy to host other kinds of programmes in the future, and we would like to take advantage of this offer.) From the crowded beach, the actors themselves personally gathered an audience by walking around the stand to begin performing the poems, and we were able to make use of the beach's public address announcer.

The afternoon performance on the Tagore promenade in Balatonfüred happened to coincide with the Anna Ball, and we managed to use the opportunity to address the visitors to the ball by walking along the beach with a very different cultural genre.

Our performance in Veszprém seemed it should be cancelled due to heavy rains. We finally managed to hold the performance, it was visited by foreign and domestic tourists, and we received very good feedback. At the end of the show, we distributed fruit to the audience.

We also had the opportunity to promote the project as widely as possible at the following
dissemination events:

Prae Art Translators' Camp (2nd October 2023, https://www.prae.hu/article/13647-rebel-butterfly/)
We Speak Seven Languages (16 th December 2023)

Our dissemination event in December was exceptionally held outside the ECF region, in Budapest, with the permission of the office. The venue was the Kelet Kult Café, where we were expecting mainly older representatives of the poetry and literary translation profession, who could not travel to our events in Veszprém due to their health. During the evening, we gave a short presentation with projections summarising what the project was about. The actor Géza Egger, gave an excellent performance of the poems and also acted as a moderator together with Mihály Szilágyi. The audience also actively responded to the questions they asked.

During the project, we created postcards with 1-1 poems by our poets. These were distributed at all events, performances, and dissemination events, and linked to our website via a QR code, helping to make the project even more visible.

As this was the first time that we held such a programme, which to our knowledge is unique at national level, and which was clearly considered a success by the participating poets, the organisers, and the audience (students and teachers) as well, we would like to make it a tradition and organise it again next year, if we can find the necessary funding. Please find below the feedback from our participating poets: https://furedifordito.wixsite.com/veve/general-5

Another result of the project is that, in view of the great interest, an anthology of the translated poems will be published by Labirintus Publishing House under the title We speak in seven languages, which premiered on 24 February 2024 at the Incognito in Veszprém, and will be presented at the Writers' Shop in Budapest on 12 April. Three of our poets will be present at this event and an additional two may also come.