PORT literary festival starts in Odesa

The first PORT literary festival, which is to become a new cultural platform in the South of Ukraine, started in Odesa on August 30.

Intent is one of the festival's media partners.

On August 30, the festival events will last until 20:00. You can also drink Crimean coffee and enjoy some sweets. The speakers of the PORT Literary Festival will include Shevchenko Prize winner, writer, poet and translator Kateryna Kalytko, poet from the Ukrainian South Nadiya Glushkova, and Valeriy Puzik, writer, veteran, director and artist.

The festival program will consist of more than 35 events: literary and musical performances, essay and poetry workshops, book presentations, a fair and master classes. One of the key events will be the musical and poetic performance "United by the Sea" dedicated to the sailors who have been missing since the spring of 2022. The audience will be able to try the format of the Vuh Theater, when performances are perceived by ear without eye contact.

The organizers of the festival, the Vyshyvanky Festival NGO, see a special priority in presenting content at the festival that would encourage southern youth to create new works, and in general to want to see the coast as more than just a recreational area.

On August 26, Intent.Insight hosted a guest of the studio, poet, PEN Ukraine member, program director of the literary festival Andriy Hayetskyi, who emphasized that PORT should become an annual festival, creating new traditions and emphasizing the multiculturalism of Odesa. The main focus is to inspire young and adult audiences to create new texts and meanings in contemporary literature.

The festival is funded by the International Renaissance Foundation and the Ukrainian Book Institute, with Yegor Gebennikov as the general partner, and partners including the Razom Charitable Foundation, Kernel, and Bank Vostok.

PHOTO: Intent/Valeriy Bolgan

Кирило Бойко