Katarzyna BAZARNIK

Co-author of liberatura books, theorist of literature, translator, and Joyce scholar, an assistant professor at the Institute of English Philology of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, and a lecturer in the postgraduate programme for Literary Translation, where she runs translation workshops. Together with Zenon Fajfer she wrote the first books to be called liberature: a triple-volume Oka-leczenie (Mute-I-Late, prototype edition 2000, 1^st ed. 2009) and (O)patrzenie (Ga(u)ze, 2003), which initiated “Liberatura” series of Korporacja Ha!art Publishing House, which they coedit. They also published Sonnet of Sonnets (2012), devised together with students of the MA Programme in Creative Writing and Bookmaking in Mills College, Oakland, CA. In 2002 Bazarnik and Fajfer founded Liberature Reading Room (now located in Malopolski Garden of Arts of the Małopolska Province Library in Kraków). She published a monograph Joyce and Liberature (Litteraria Pragensia, 2011), and has edited or co-edited several volumes of essays, including James Joyce and After. Writer and Time (2010) and Incarnations of Textual Materiality. From Modernism to Liberature (2014)  and two monograph issues of a translation journal Literatura na Świecie (Literatures of the World) devoted to James Joyce (2004) and B.S. Johnson (2008). Her translation of B.S Johnson’s The Unfortunates was awarded at the Wrocław Good Books Fair in 2008. Her theoretical work on liberature as a new literary genre integrating the verbal content with the material shape of the book introduced the concept to the academic world in the UK, Ireland, France, Japan, Taiwan and the USA.

Zenon FAJFER (°1970)
a Polish poet, playwright, creator and theoretician of liberature, a new literary genre which embraces works that integrate the word with unconventional shapes of the book. He introduced into poetry an original, interactive form called “the emanational poem,” in which he simultaneously creates invisible, dimensions of text. He also uses the new media, creating his own version of kinetic poems and hypertextual poetry. Co-author, with Katarzyna Bazarnik, of books initiating the phenomenon of liberature: a triptych Oka-leczenie (Mute-I-Late, 2000, 2009) and (O)patrzenie (Ga(u)ze, 2003) and a poetic happening Liberty Poem (New York, Chicago, Taipei, Tokyo, 2011); the author of the poem-in-a-bottle Spoglądając Przez Ozonową Dziurę (Detect Ozone Whole Nearby, 2004), a bilingual multimedia poetry volume dwadzieścia jeden liter/ten letters (2010), Liberature or Total Literature. Collected Essays 1999-2009 (2010), Pieta, a drama which he staged and directed in Łaźnia Nowa Theatre (Kraków, 2006, 2012), and a hypertextual volume of emanational poetry Powieki (Eyelids, 2013). He has just finished work on a new collection of poems called Widok z głębokiej wieży (A View from the Deep Tower). He has presented his works in many countries, including the USA, Japan, Taiwan, the UK, Ireland, France, and Italy.

The Brussels International Underground Poetry Fest is a free festival aimed at all those who love literature. This second edition will lead the audience through the universe of sound poetry, poetic performance and visual poetry  through performances, exhibitions, a book fair, a conference and workshops for young and old alike. Experimental poetic expressions will be recreated in unexpected places. The creme de la creme of experimental poetry from across the globe will be meeting over three days to show their work and talk with academics.     
This year, the themes of the festival and the conference are:
•    “The poem as book as art” (Liberatura and other book-art, literature as art book, the book as art, the poem as art as book…)
•    The 150th anniversary of the birth of the founder of  Zaum, Velimir Khlebnikov
•    The decline of written poetry (flarf, post-literature poetry, online poetry, asemic writing, performance poetry….)
Visit the festival site: http://poetryfest.brussels/

Picture gallery